(G2)
28-02-2025
Paris, 25 February 2025
Dear second.garden,
I wanted to greet you with a letter the old-fashioned way, from a place with cliffs and trees. As I could not find a postcard with the desired motive in the tourist kiosks, I ordered a second-hand one from a web-antiquarian. Although I wanted to forward it to you physically, I will let a scanned version reach you by e-mail. It will be accompanied by this letter which I have rewritten a couple of times now. It can be regarded as a small cut into the flesh of Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.
The front of the postcard depicts an island which I like to think of as the heart of the park. Crowning the cliff is a temple - or a garden folly. The island is currently inaccessible as it is receiving a touch-up of its skin. The back is naturally marked with the name of the recipient, a postage stamp and an ink stamp. On both sides, the card is overlaid with an image of a temporary intervention located somewhere in the mainland of the park. I know that Victor noticed this camouflaged fence as well. Closing off a pathway while allowing a stream of water to pass beneath it, the fence is dressed in multiple copies of an image of green leaves. I layered the fence onto the scanned postcard as a way to update it.
Writing this letter has let me become more acquainted with the park. 160 years ago, there was not a single plant in the park. As a gift for the working class Parisians, the park was constructed on the soils of a former quarry where gypsum and limestone were extracted, some of which lives on in the buildings of Paris. I read that the terrain was known as Mont Chauve (Chauve-Mont —> Chaumont) referring to its bare and desolate surfaces. In its pre-park life, it was also used as a waste dump, an execution ground and a site for slaughtering worn-out horses.
The park is as artificial as it is natural. There are eucalyptus trees and amusement rides. Nesting herons and wine on tap. Lebanese cedar trees and a bridge by Gustave Eiffel. The water running through the fence dressed in leaf prints comes from the artificial waterfalls in the park and is pumped from the nearby canal. The stairs and railings in the park are concrete casts resembling tree trunks and branches. The granite-looking caves, stalactites and cliffs in the postcard are imitations in concrete and plaster.
It as a constructed organism requiring daily maintenance and closed gates at night. Because of the porous gypsum beneath - the flesh of the park - the fake granite (real concrete) crust has started to crumble. Other parts have recently been closed due to a soil lift, and last year the artificial lake was completely emptied and cleaned. The current renovation project has a budget of 6 million euros. The previous one 25 years ago cost 15 million euros.
When the park opened as part of the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1867, it was presented as much as a work of landscape engineering as a romantic vision of nature. In the postcard from 1904, I see the reconstruction of a picturesque scene. In the updated version from today, I see a display of maintenance, but also an interpretation of what the park is made of: A scene with lush trees and covered wounds.
Bulut Tümer Bursali
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