Presto, la notte

Nuit Blanche returns to Villa Medici on Thursday, November 4, to showcase the work of the sixteen fellows of the Académie de France in Rome, in residence since September 2021: visual artists, art historians, composers, writers, architects, designers and video artists will be the protagonists of this highlight dedicated to contemporary creation!

The fellows will take over various areas of the Villa Médicis with projects involving a wide range of forms – visual works, performances, video projections, installations, sound productions, lectures… – inviting visitors to wander through the Villa and its gardens by night, as well as in spaces not usually accessible to the public. Their interventions will literally illuminate the premises: video projections and performances will be given pride of place, in keeping with the ephemeral nature of the event.

The Nuit Blanche will be an opportunity to discover the spaces of Villa Medici in a new light, activated by the proposals of the residents, who represent a cross-section of their individual, multi-disciplinary research and are sometimes the result of spontaneous intuitions and collaborations developed in the first weeks of their stay in Rome.

This event also takes the form of an open laboratory: neither quite an exhibition nor a studio visit, the event is more a moment of experience and cross-fertilization between artistic languages, as much as a meeting between the fellows and the Roman public.

The title of this edition – Presto, la notte – refers to the context in which the event takes place, between dusk and the early hours of the night, but also suggests an impatient call to the night and the inspirations it brings. A state, that of the night, suspended between darkness and illumination, solitude and sharing, immobility and agitation; the Nuit Blanche at Villa Medici is an invitation to reclaim the early hours of the evening, after a period when confinement and curfew have questioned our relationship with time.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Thursday, November 4, 2021 from 7:00 pm to midnight
Self-guided tour of the gardens and interiors of the Villa Medici.
Bar area & savoury snacks all evening.
Compulsory checks at entrance:

• Valid Green Pass
• Thermoscan body temperature reading (access cannot be granted above 37.5°)
• Metal detectors

Masks must be worn indoors.
The following are not permitted in any area: motorcycle or bicycle helmets; bulky bags and suitcases; pets, with the exception of guide dogs.
Villa Medici does not have a checkroom.