Something for the Weekend? (26th/27th September)

Once more, a few suggestions for interesting or unusual things to do in Paris for the coming weekend. This will be the first weekend of Autumn, but the sun is forecast to shine, so I’m sending you out into the streets again!

Please add any events or activities you think should be promoted or which you would like to promote yourself in the comments, and let me know if you have any events in the coming weekends you would like to promote.


La Fête des Jardins
Throughout the weekend, just about every park and garden in the city will have some kind of activity organised. It may be tasting food, learning how to pot plants, or just live music, but ‘something for everyone’ is the cliché that comes to mind.
For those looking for something a little out of the ordinary, try the Parc de Buttes Chaumont which is always a fascinating visit, but which this weekend will also feature a demonstration by the city tree-surgeons! On a quieter note, many of the secret and private gardens of the city’s religious institutions will be open, with most of these being situated on the left-bank in the 6th and 7th arrondissements.
Click here for the full programme (5 Mo PDF).
26th and 27th September, various locations.

Rue Stick – an “Affichage Sauvage”
On Sunday afternoon, a group of street artists are planning to decorate a pair of bare walls near the Bastille with the idea being that the more of them there are, the less chance they will be stopped by the police! Many well-known names on the scene will be present, including Nice-Art, Kouka, Tian and Titifromparis, and the atmosphere should be fun and festive. The two walls span the corner of two streets and provide a surface of upwards of 7Om² - enough space for some spectacular creations!
Click here for more information.
Sunday 27th September, 1.30pm
Rue des Lions Saint-Paul and Rue du Petit Musc
Métro Line 7, Station Sully - Morland

Les Portes Ouvertes des ateliers de Ménilmontant
Several districts around Paris have an annual weekend where artists open up their studios to visitors, and this weekend it is the turn of Menilmontant in the North-East of the city. Outside of any discussions as to whether these are true artists or just part-time painters and photographers, it is an excellent opportunity to explore the normally closed passageways and courtyards of this old and largely unspoilt part of the city.
More information here, including maps and mini-biographies on each participating artist.
Friday 25th to Monday 28th

Spectaculaire
The Autumn is considered to be the beginning of the artistic season in France. In an attempt to promote some of the forthcoming events, the city of Paris has had the curious but interesting idea of organising a promotional weekend alongside the river Seine. The 1 km long space will be organised by theme, including music, theatre and museums, and 12 stages will host over 100 entirely free performances over the weekend.
The full programme can be found here.
Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th from 10 :00 – 18 :00
Port de la Gare & Port de Tolbiac (Metro: Quai de la Gare)

Last Weekend of the Planète Parr exhibition
Just a reminder that this weekend marks the last chance to visit the fascinating and amusing exhibition of English photographer Martin Parr’s pictures and private collections.
Jeu de Paume, 1 place de la Concorde 75008 Paris
Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th from 10:00 – 19:00

Postcards from the City

If you want a comprehensive and detailed history of a city and would like to see how fashions and technology have evolved over the last century, ask a deltiologist. In Paris, the deltiologists, or postcard collectors to give them a simpler name, congregate around the Carré Marigny on the Avenue Gabriel behind the President’s residence. This piece of land just off the Champs Elysées was given to the city of Paris by a rich stamp collector in 1887 with the condition that the city allow the land to be used by the stamp collecting community. It branched out in the 20th century to include postcards and other collectibles, and is still lively when in use, which today is Thursdays, Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays.

I never understood stamp collecting, but I had a small postcard collection, made up of purchases I’d made on summer holidays. I generally purchased one type, a kind of cartoon style map of regions we’d visited, with a comical smiling sun in one corner. Collecting for me though only seemed reasonable if there was a defined number of objects, such as Panini football stickers, and I soon realised that postcard collecting would be an impossible and never ending task. So I grew older and stopped.

One person who has never stopped though is the British photographer Martin Parr. For nearly 40 years he has built up a formidable collection, numbering over 40,000 weird, wonderful and downright ordinary images, 750 of which he has published in a collection of books. The best known cards in his collection are probably those from a selection which he has labelled boring postcards, which are generally pictures of city modernity, including motorways, service stations and concrete shopping centres. For Parr, the postcard itself is an object of art, and the stories they tell are of endless fascination.

Postcards have rarely been produced without reason. Even the most banal items in Parr's collection are mementos of not so long ago times when people felt great pride in freshly constructed roads or new concrete municipality. It is a reflection of the fact that the postcard has always been as much about documenting as it has about communicating. In the early years of photography, daily newspapers were not technically able to print photographs, but postcards could be produced quickly and inexpensively. This led to an enormous demand for pictures of recent newsworthy events, but also of snapshots of the environments in which people lived, their buildings, streets, parks and shops, and collections began.

Being cheaper to send than letters, a postcard became almost the equivilent of today’s text messages or e-mails. This was a time when postal deliveries were assured several times a day, making it possible to send a card to someone in the same city and receive an answer within hours. In the early years of the 20th century, tens of millions of postcards were being processed by postal systems each week.

Is there a future for postcards in today’s world? Although we are always connected to some form of communication, and despite the ubiquitous nature of cameras, I believe there is a future simply because I still believe in the power of the postcard. They are classic items of design, retaining a size and form which has remained constant. They are also artificial, false representations of what we see, making them impossible to reproduce. They provide idealised versions of reality, taken at impractical hours of the day, from impossible angles with doctored, altered colours. It is for these reasons that they remain fascinating.