Louise Pétron - Resistant and Concierge

There a some heroes whose story seems destined never to be told. This would have been the case for Louise Pétron, if a campaign to have a plaque erected in her honour in 2004 had not been successful.

The city of Paris eventually accepted the request, and the story of Louise Pétron joined 1200 others around the city, 900 of which - like that of Pétron - commemorate events that took place during the second world war.

Louise Petron was the concierge of a non-descript building stuck out on the edge of the city in the 17th arrondissement. It was a quieter post than her previous job where she'd been caretaker at the Moulin Rouge - at least until war broke out and Paris was occupied by German forces.

Her ground-floor home and office looked out towards la zone. Today this deep cutting is filled with the roar of the périphérique motorway, but in the 1940s it still remained empty as a reminder of previous conflicts, or rather previous attempts to keep them away from the city. This was the trace of the 19th century Thiers fortifications, and Pétron once again found that they offered no protection from invading forces.

It was a simple life, but one worth fighting for. The building was new, in crisp brick and gleaming stone, and there was an attractive shared garden surrounding it. It was typical of the social housing that was springing up around the city, and it was something to be proud of.

It is not clear how she became involved, but Louise Pétron's concièrgerie became an important letterbox for the Paris resistance movement. It was a clearly defined and recognised role (she is described as a sous-lieutenant on the plaque) and she performed it conscientiously. Far from the centre of the city and the eyes of the occupiers, she was able to pass on important messages with seemingly little regard for the danger it put her in.


She managed to stay off the radar for much of the war, but as the liberation of Paris drew closer, her luck was to run out. On July 17th 1944, the gestapo came to her home and arrested her in front of her terrified children. She was interrogated and tortuted, but revealed nothing about the network she was working for. With her husband ill and hospitalised in Paris she was sent alone to the Ravensbrück camp on the last such train to leave Paris, only days before the city's liberation. She died at the camp of typhus early in 1945, just months before the end of the conflict.

For many years she was simply another victim of the war, but in 2004, a date marking the 60th anniversary of the Paris uprising and liberation, a plaque in her honour was finally unveiled. Present at the event was her tearful son, his mind surely full of memories of the last time he saw his mother in this spot.

Of Sheep and Men

Two new creations have appeared in the street in which I live - one by a relatively well-known artist, and one that will perhaps always remain anonymous!

According to a fascinating interview in Street Tease magazine, Michael Beerens changed artistic tack following a serious motorbike accident in 2007. Previously he'd just concentrated on graffiti, but during his 6 months in hospital, he decided that he'd like to bring his art more into the public domain and concentrate on animals, a subject that had always fascinated him.

"J’utilise les animaux car ils permettent de dresser un parallèle avec l’homme sans qu’il se sente montré du doigt. Ce qui me permet de traiter différents sujet sans notion de jugement. Un peu comme une fable, le lecteur y voit ce qu’il veut y voir" (I use animals because they enable me to draw a parallel to man, without anyone feeling singled out. It allows me to treat different subjects without a notion of judgement. Like a tale, readers see what they want to see)

This project, a creation produced in association with Les 3 Murs, is amusing and crisply painted (in a lovely blue!), and the sheep in wolf's clothing is a nice twist. For more details on the artist, see his official website: http://www.michaelbeerens.fr/works/accueil.html

The second creation is more of a guerilla production. I'm not sure if there are more of these busy little men around Paris or not, but this is the only one I have seen so far. Something tells me though that we may be in for an invasion soon, but who knows what other tricks they have planned for unsuspecting drivers?

Noise Maps of Paris

“Noise is to sound what weeds are to flowers” said Des from the Soundlandscapes blog when we were working together on a project earlier this year. I had made the mistake of saying that we needed to record some ‘noises’ rather than ‘sounds’, and he quickly put me in my place.

However, as we began recording the sounds of the Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale, it soon became evident that noise was in the air too. The périphérique motorway was in earshot, and its dull constant rumble was polluting the natural rustles and chirps of the garden.

The delicate distinction between a noise and a sound once again popped its head up recently with the launch of a new website in Paris: http://www.bruitparif.fr/en.

Offering live information on noise levels in the capital through a series of brightly coloured maps and charts. It’s almost like a child’s game, but the subject itself is very serious. “Noise is a very significant source of annoyance in Ile-de-France (the Paris region) due to the high concentration of housing and the exceptional density of transportation infrastructures” announces instantly the homepage of the site. “Among disturbances of quality of life” it continues, “noise is the first nuisance mentioned”.

The website was created by Bruitparif, a non-profit organisation which aims to fight against noise in the Paris region. Two kinds of maps can be found on the site. A static map which paints the historic noise hotspots across the city (the darker the colour, the higher the decibels), and a series of live charts from active captors in experimental zones (for example next to motorways and train lines, and more interestingly, near the bars of the Rue Amelot).

Walking through this polychrome city is an interesting experience, and one which offers many surprises. Seine-side apartments may be amongst the most expensive in Paris, but they are also situated in areas of deep purple. Indeed, it seems that the richer areas to the west and south are globally noisier than their more popular eastern and northern neighbours.

The périphérique is unsurprisingly a river of purple surrounding the city, and cemeteries and hospitals large patches of peaceful whites.

The message vehiculed by this site seems to be that all noise is bad. Nobody, it seems, likes a noise, but sounds – music, wind in the leaves, bird song, gently trickling streams – are universal pleasures. So when does a sound become a noise?

The French national organisation for standardisation (AFNOR) gives an official definition, stating that ‘tout son inopportun est un bruit’ (all inappropriate sounds are noise). However, this description seems both vague and arbitrary.

For Des, a sound obsessive who spends much of his time today trying to capture the most atmospheric of them around Paris, “noise is simply sound in the wrong place and usually in the wrong quantity”. It's an attractive, succinct description, but one that also seems to reflect his worries as a technician.

In a city of 2 million people, our personal conceptions of sound will never be entirely shared. The sounds that give us the most pleasure in life - conversation, laughter, music - can also seep into other people's lives and become life-ruining noise. Finding the right balance is probably the most important cement of all in any city, and it is the job of this organisation to see where in the city the equilibrium is leaning dangerously towards noise. For if there is too much noise, nobody will be able to take pleasure from sounds.

Click here for the noise maps.

Click here for the Rumeur live measurement service.

Dancing Cranes

On the site earmarked to become the athletes village of the always to remain imaginary 2012 Paris Olympics, two cranes are caught dancing across a reflective pond. It reminds me of writer and walker Iain Sinclair's description of construction at the London Olympics site; “The heron dance of elegant cloud-scraping cranes”*, a rare moment of poetry for a project that he has consistently labelled as a scam.

To his eyes, it is the clash of corporations against communities, the spectacular against the ordinary. Sinclair equates construction on the site in London’s east end to destruction, with old communities being moved out to be replaced by transient individuals unwilling or unable to create new communities.

“The first thing that goes...is any sense of place” he points out, describing the totality as “a series of losses – of allotments, football pitches, wildlife habitats”. Buildings appear, which “could have been designed anywhere for any purpose” on land yet to be completely cleared of decades of toxic industrial use.

The east of London, he points out, is “where everything disappears or is revised”. Such revisions though are not unique to events celebrating the power of corporations. Paris had the same dream as London, but that dream became the Parc Martin Luther King, site of the reflected cranes.

“It seems extraordinary that we can find money for something gigantic but not for something small and local” said Sinclair about the London Olympics, but in Paris - the supposed loser - something small(er) and local is slowly growing from the ground at the same time as the tracks and stadia across the channel.

"La Ville se reinvente" cries the Clichy-Batignolles promotional website, highlighting the changes being made on what was to be the Olympics site. It has been "conçu pour les Parisiens" on the "franges oubliées de la ville". Here the land has been reclaimed from the railway, eating up land previously used for the shunting and storage of trains. Progress is not moving but standing still, not producing power but creating a sustainable, carbon neutral environment. Green replacing brown on the map.

Without corporate sponsors to appease, Paris has been able to imagine a socially mixed utopia with the old alongside the young, the private alongside the public. 6,500 people will live in this new quarter, but will they really form a more closely-linked community than the post-Olympic dwellers in London?

The Parc Martin Luther King, the first truly visible element of this new community, is already a success, but it is also little more than an extension of the Square des Batignolles. This is not a radical reclamation of untamed wastelands, but rather an attempt to expand the city northwards. Alongside, a big hole in the ground will become an underground car park, and apartment blocks, named Lot E.1 or Lot N.3., are sprouting skywards.

It is difficult to compare London to Paris, to decide which has been the winner and which the loser. London won the games because it was felt that there was a greater chance of regeneration and a bigger legacy to leave behind. The Paris bid was seen as lacking in audacity, offering just cosmetic changes to the city fabric.

Losing perhaps gave the city the opportunity to dream of something better, but the community is still largely virtual today, happy families in an architect's sketch. Success for Paris would be bringing working class Clichy and middle class Batignolles closer together, but historical barriers are hard to break down.

The creation of all new communities begins with dancing cranes. Only time decides whether that dance will lead to the birth of a successful neighbourhood or not.


*From ‘The Olympics Scam’ an essay by Iain Sinclair published in the London Review of Books.

Nuit Blanche and black nights

With a calendar overflowing with themes and events, it is not surprising to find occasions where two celebrations offer a curious clash.

This Saturday Paris will celebrate both the Nuit Blanche and the Jour de la Nuit, two events which promote radically different perspectives on city nights.

The Nuit Blanche, celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2011, is an open-air party, bringing thousands of curious citizens out onto brightly illuminated street stage sets.

The Jour de la Nuit on the other hand seeks to bring darkness back to our cities. As the promotional material proclaims, it is "une opération de sensibilisation à la protection de la biodiversité nocturne et du ciel étoilé ainsi qu’une prise de conscience du problème de pollution lumineuse" (an awareness campaign to protect nocturnal biodiversity and starry skies as well as an appraisal of the light pollution problem).

It is an event covering the whole of the country, but whilst there are some parts of the national territory that are already among the darkest parts of Europe, it is the city which is the real battleground. In Paris, the events organised this year are far smaller than the funfair of the Nuit Blanche, but they may be just as thought-provoking.

Near the Parc Montsouris, amateur astronomers will attempt to peer through the city lights and show Jupiter and its satellites to curious passers by, but perhaps more interesting still will be a night walk through the Parc Montsouris itself. The Nuit Blanche gets people away from their beds, but through actions that turn night into day rather than through initiatives that help them to discover life after dark. Organisers of the night walk though will show how an urban park changes at night, pointing out the fauna and flora that come alive when the sun goes down.

This weekend, Paris lets you choose your own vision of the night; festive and artificial, or natural and hushed. Unless you decide to take a trip through both worlds.

For a list of suggestions for the Nuit Blanche, see my post on the Paris Weekends blog.