Up all night at Jue Fest

Music and arts festival Jue brings a new order of internationally acclaimed acts in its fifth year. Post-punk heavyweights Gang of Four will play at Yugong Yishan on March 20, Canadian soloist Grimes takes on Mao Livehouse on March 21 and English folk singer Frank Turner will do the same on March 23.

Running from March 8 through March 24, the festival, run by Split Works, spans venues across town, from the Gulou hipster haunts to the grungy drive-in movie outpost 2 Kolegas.

Adding to the wandering party spirit this year is the White Night event, a concept done in other major cities' festivals, like Paris, St Petersburg and Melbourne. In retooling the all-nighter art event for Beijing, Sophie McKinnon, Split Works' key organizer in charge of the White Night, says she has renamed this event Bai Ye (literally White Night).

White Night events often take place over 24 hours and showcase an array of creative installations within walking distance of each other. The chosen areas for the event are Gulou and Dongzhimen in Dongcheng district. The Bai Ye is set to last from 10 pm March 22 to 10 pm the next day. Split Works say they hope to successfully pull together 24 events over the 24 hour period. Both the number of tickets available as well as ticket prices are as yet unconfirmed.

Among the 24 events in progress for the Bai Ye are a shadow theater performance at the Penghao Theater in Nanluoguxiang Hutong, a photography workshop, a traveling cinema and a silent disco held at 4Corners bar in Dashibei Hutong.

Specific times and locations for most events however are still in progress. Nonetheless, McKinnon says the event will be the first of its kind in Beijing and affirms Jue's open source policy and community-driven spirit.

"There is a great willingness to take risks for good ideas here," she says. "Small communities within the Second Ring Road are supportive and will genuinely get behind an original concept like the Bai Ye. That's why I thought it could work in Beijing."

Many of the privately sourced venues are in fact hutong apartments belonging to expat locals who will donate their digs to the event to Split Works for a full day. Organizers are still looking for volunteers.

Sarah Keenlyside, 31, works as CEO of events company Bespoke Beijing. A longtime fan of the Jue Festival, she says both she and her boyfriend are pleased to be helping the organizers of Bai Ye by letting out their Gulou apartment in Zhaofujie Hutong.

But Keenlyside says she still does not know how the scheduled photography piece will go down in the confines of the renovated courtyard she rents in.

"I met the Chinese artist when he came to look at our place. My Mandarin is shaky and I'm still not sure what he has in mind. I think he wants to move our curtains to another window to avoid reflection in the daytime," she says.

Keenlyside says she looks forward to managing the exhibition and hopes the Bai Ye will allow Beijingers to take in good art near Beijing's famous Drum and Bell Towers.

Keenlyside says Beijing allows ideas like the Bai Ye to survive the pipeline because "they rely on good faith."

"In other cities, there would probably not be the same sense of community and positivity among neighbors as there is here. That's why the Jue Festival works," she says.