“Nightlife is nothing without the people that work during the night.”
This is how I chose to open my contribution to the Culture of Nightlife Conference in Timișoara, as part of the European Capital of Culture 2023 programme.
Too often, discussions around nightlife are reduced to entertainment, consumption, or regulation. But behind the glow of illuminated streets, pulsating festivals, and lively bars, there is a hidden ecosystem of labor—one that sustains the urban night and allows nocturnal life to unfold. From cooks and cleaners to bouncers, transport workers, and emergency responders, these are the bodies that carry the night on their shoulders. My presentation, Night Culture, Night Policies and Night Futures, aimed to reframe how we think about the urban night—not just as a time or a territory, but as a site of social negotiation and policy experimentation.
In Timișoara, during The Night Art Festival, this complexity was visible: public art installations glowing against the dark, children running through illuminated plazas, and conversations about how light can connect communities. Yet none of this happens in a vacuum. My intervention was a call to recognize the night as a space of labor, a space of rights, and a space of futures. We cannot build inclusive nocturnal cultures if we ignore the precarities and potentials of those who make the night possible.
This conference was part of a broader national cultural program developed under “Timișoara – European Capital of Culture in 2023”, financed through the Grow Timișoara 2023 initiative by the Project Center of Timișoara Municipality, with support from the Ministry of Culture.
I leave Timișoara with gratitude and a renewed conviction that the night must be studied, cared for, and governed—with and for those who inhabit it.
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Manuel Garcia-Ruiz 