16.11.26 /In this recording I revisited a square that I had been meaning to record for a while / It sits in the 4th arrondissement (area) of the city, next to the Centre Georges Pompidou, a library and modern art museum / The museum itself is an interesting building, with a scaffolding styled exoskeleton / However each time I have visited I have sat down with my back to it, preferring to observe the little square /

The square looks out of place with the style of central Paris and for that I like it / Its dominated by a huge piece of graffiti on an uncharacteristically featureless building side / The woman with eyes wide and finger to her lips looks down starkly on the square / Below it are a number of graffiti tags, the exact style that smother the walls of every autoroute (motorway) and railway line leading from Paris for a hundred kilometres /

The adjacent church is markedly shabby for central Paris / Whilst still ornate, it is as though time has worn it / I sit on a metal bench with the Stravinsky fountain behind me / Sixteen modern art sculptures sit in the fountain / However the fountain has been drained and the result is an ugly one, with the rusted chains holding the sculptures in place and tubes for pumping water revealed /

The other side of the square holds a row of cafes with terraces / The sound of café chatter can just about be heard on the left side of the recording /

I sat enjoying the sense of space and rest bite from traffic sounds that the square brings / It is punctuated by people jumping on to the long metal bench for pictures and a workman drilling behind me / In the background you can hear bells ringing out and several languages being spoken / Opposite me small groups sit on the steps / A young couple share a cigarette / Pigeons take flight from their nests in the church. Children chase each other across the square, content and carefree /

For me the graffiti is the important element here as it is a reminder of the other side to Paris that I was becoming accustomed to and intrigued by as the initial tourist blindness began to wear off / As I was living outside the limits of the city I spent a fair amount of time travelling in and around, sometimes via some of the less desirable areas / Gone are the ornate buildings and avenues. Instead warehouses, vacant spaces, towerblocks and autoroutes dissect the neighbourhoods /

The streets are often messy / The walls covered in graffiti and broken furniture lies strewn on the pavement / Whilst it is impossible to miss the beggars in the city centre, I was more struck by seeing the homeless in the suburbs / Not begging, just sitting there on mattresses or sometimes tents / I sat remembering how on my first weekend in the city, walking to a nightclub in the outskirts was the first time my Wendy and I had felt vulnerable / As I came back from my thoughts to the safety of daylight in the centre, I was still looking at the graffiti of the woman with the finger to her lips telling me - don’t break the spell //

All recordings and Photos by Ben Gale See the PDF: https://issuu.com/bivouacrecording/docs/60_minute_cities-_paris-_ben_gale

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