2. Hortus Vaguus (Pekařská St.)
Lucia Bergamaschi
On the collapsed roof of a long-abandoned distillery, urban greenery has flourished. A new wilderness is reclaiming space that was once the subject of human construction, blanketing it with time. Access to this green space takes place through a section of the distillery that stands to this day. These two parts are separated by a wall that functions as a gate between that which is abandoned and that which is preserved, between order and chaos. Communication runs through the cracks, the holes in old pipes, and the broken bricks. Medieval enclosed gardens (horti conclusi) and paradise gardens depicted in Gothic paintings served as inspiration for the project. My research then shifted toward understanding how these spaces are delineated and perceived in broader (legislative-administrative) contexts. The key starting point for this research was finding out that this space was designated in the Land Registry of Brno as ‘other’ land.
As stated in the Explanatory Report of the Gardening Act of 29 October 2019, lands designated as ‘other’ in the Land Registry are often appropriated for gardening activities, thus contributing to the development of green spaces for the broader public benefit of gardening. In her essay ‘Zahrádkářské osady v urbanistickém kontextu měst’ (Gardening Settlements in the Urban Context of Cities, 2021), Lucie Miovská noted that since 1989, the definition of ‘allotment gardens’ has fluctuated between development areas, production areas, and allotment sites, without considering other directions such as ‘sites with recreational or social, ecological, and urbanist significance.’
Another, more recent reference is the concept of ‘vague terrain’ where vagueness is both ‘absence but also the possibility of flourishing, a function that a given place in the city could potentially acquire.’ The only thing ‘vague terrain’ lacks is the city’s own productivity. Vagueness thus relates to the function we ascribe to a space. In the case of vague terrain, it refers to ‘places without an apparent function’ or ‘places deprived of function’ that we tend to repair, to fill up – through reconstruction, revitalization.
The first work of my project titled The Garden is on Fire involved an event where plants from the rooftop wilderness were collected and roasted. It was an intervention intended on the one hand to connect with the nearby unreclaimed greenery (vague terrain) and on the other hand reflected an attempt to ritualize non-places, the way public vague terrains are predominantly used. According to Byung-Chul Han, non-places become places through a connection to a space in a time. This makes them social, such as in the case of festivals and ceremonies.
The second, subsequent part of my research, the Vague (Sound) Garden, comprises a work that uses sound to appropriate the hidden urban garden, and bring life to the street – in this case, Pekařská. The work is situated in a specific time and space, acknowledging the current state of the area where urban wilderness has appeared. Three months of sound recordings enable visitors to now experience the garden's space as if they themselves were standing in it. Simultaneously, the sounds of the garden recorded and heard on the journey from Old Brno towards the Brno’s center provide a counterpoint to the noisy, asphalt street almost devoid of greenery. This encounter fosters listeners’ reflections on the mutual interaction between nature and the city, and emphasizes the importance of preserving existing green areas in our urban landscape.
