I was out until 3am on Saturday night for Northern Spark, an all-night city-wide art festival modeled after the nuit blanche, or "white night" festivals of Europe. We hopped on shuttle buses that ran in a loop from 6pm to 6am, dropping people off at participating galleries, museums, parks, hotels and shops, each of which had stuff like fascinating installation pieces, live art-making and interactive stuff. Here are some of the highlights of what we saw:
- a roomful of people sleeping while a lady sang soft lullabyes
- an underground cartoonist draw on a six-foot page with a seven-foot quill pen
- the most amazing view of Minneapolis, in the Foshay Tower's 30th-floor observation deck
- a psychedelic 3D projection syched with techno music
- dudes spray-painting a mural on the side of a builing
- teenagers inexplicably dressed as hipster zombies on the bus (or at least that was my interpretation of their attire)
- A group glow-in-the-dark art project, using puffy paint, construction paper and sparkly stickers. My finished piece was too stupid to post here.
- A new two-person sleeping position that involved one person laying in a giant X while the other person dejectedly curls up in a ball off to the side. I initially played the role of the giant X, but lying in such a position while wearing tiny leather shorts was deemed too too PG-13 for the museum. Whoops.
I love nights like this. It's so much fun to do something different, y'know? By the time 3am rolled around, we were pretty much sleepwalking, but it was worth it. Summers in Minneapolis are amazing.
