More than 1,000 people yesterday attended Nuit Blanche, an all-night art gala in the Taipei Railway Station area featuring installation art by local and international artists, as well as sound and light shows.
Nuit Blanche originated in Paris in 2002, the Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs said, adding that it is observed internationally on the first Saturday of October and is aimed at making art more accessible to the public and allowing residents and tourists to see their cities in a new light.
Following a performance by a jazz group, a group of foreign delegates joined Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) to launch the event in the plaza in front of the National Taiwan Museum.
Photo: CNA, courtesy of the Taipei City Government Department of Cultural Affairs
“Taipei is the second major Asian city to host the event, after Kyoto [Japan]. The French representative to Taiwan told me that he finds Nuit Blanche in Kyoto boring, because the city is too quiet,” Ko said.
Ko said he did not know how well the event would be received, but he hoped that all participants would have a “sleepless” night of fun, in reference to the event’s slogan, “No one sleeps tonight.”
“Taipei has set numerous records today,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Wu Chih-chung (吳志中) said at the event.
“Taipei is the first among ethnic Chinese communities to hold the event in sync with the world. Due to the time difference, it has also become the first city internationally to start the event,” Wu added.
He said he hopes Taiwan and France will be able to forge deeper ties through the event.
European Economic and Trade Office head Madeleine Majorenko said she believes any city that is ready to reinvent itself and explore its artistic possibilities can host Nuit Blanche successfully, and that she believes Taipei is ready for this challenge.
French Office in Taipei Director Benoit Guidee said the Paris mayor came up with the idea of Nuit Blanche because he wanted Paris residents to have an opportunity to enjoy art in a casual setting.
He said he believes the event would help further relations between Taiwan and France.
Ko later arrived at the historic North Gate on Zhongxiao W Road to enjoy “light sculptures” being projected on the building, which changed to the beat of electronic dance music being broadcast live.
Performers danced pas-de-deux to Vaudeville music in front of the historic Taipei Beimen Post Office.
The event ran from 6pm last night to 6am today and cost the city NT$9.2 million (US$293,311).
The department said that some artworks featured in the event would continue to be displayed at suitable locations after the event.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000