Introduction
Perambulação is an immersion experience that discusses urban and architectural issues beyond contemporary art. Considering Brazil a country plenty of contradictions, this project foreseeing an artistic research in city’s structures.
Perambulação is an opportunity for Brazilian and Dutch people to exchange life and professional experiences not only between the group but also with community. In this aspect, the project is extremely fresh and democratic, understanding art not just for a special public, but for any student, professional and neighbors interested in achieving knowledge about interventions in foreign public spaces.
The matter of happen in two extremely different cities as Rotterdam and São Paulo, promotes a possibility to discuss totally different realities even for locals: in one hand Rotterdam, the biggest port in the world, but a medium size, new planned city of 600.000 inhabitants with a high percentage of immigrants and social complexities; in the other hand, the megalopolis São Paulo (16 million inhabitants), one of largest cities in world, with serious nature damage problems (with just 4% of green area), but the most important financial center of Brazil.
Perambulação, as an interdisciplinary project, provides a possibility to discuss deeply the cities differences in Holland and Brazil through poetical projects that mixes real aspects and fiction about architecture, urbanism, cultural lifestyle and contemporary art.
It will be the first time to receive such a important project in a Brazilian city. A likely publication after about Perambulação experience is also something never published in Brazil, and is a important material to straight the relationship between involved countries.
Daniela Labra
Objectives
Perambulação (Wandering) is a unique collaborative art project that brings together 10 Dutch and Brazilian artists in Rotterdam and São Paulo, to express, by means of various urban installations, their opinion on social commitments and political platforms.
By juxtaposing actions and urban conditions, Perambulação considers our own role and responsibility in sustaining the complex environment of which we are part and at the same time regards the powerful influence of urban surroundings in our own lives. It is a cross-cultural research that will evolve organically in actions constructed from a complex series of spiritual, intellectual, emotional and physical relationships: in a city, as in nature, we feel part of something larger than ourselves, but we are also aware of our separateness.
The work addresses issues of our time and our various, overlapping two cultural different experiences. For over 1 month, the 10 Perambulação artists, living and working together, will articulate socio-economic and political contents, particularly when perceived in relation to the countries from which they come.
By means of collaborations and interventions young artists present themselves on different platforms, to establish one’s identity and determine collective positions. The content may vary from highly serious activism to artistic interventions, but always focused on the urge to reveal politics of space, ideology of architecture, social claiming of architectural redundancy, rhetoric of functionality of objects and spaces, depiction of public property.
As collaborative work with artists in their own and other community, Perambulação offers a contribution to the crossing of borders and lead us to the exchange of creative multicultural dialogues as a response to a shared need around and about contemporary urban culture concepts.
Plan
In Perambulacão the 10 Dutch and Brazilian artists will live and work together for over 1 month in Rotterdam and after in São Paulo. They will join forces, merging materials and meanings to create a tangible but temporary diary of process. Experimenting with both site-specific and cross-cultural performance materials, the artists will be particularly concerned with physical-emotional experiences and with the ideology of visual urban objects/images.
Perambulacão would serve as a moment to set up an event that would not only allow the artists to expose the public to their unique interpretations of urban culture through their own artistic sensibility, but would also serve as a form to inspire an intelligent debate on urban issues. As an urban performance art event, the work presents a social, psychological and conceptual narrative with the viewers, not only on individual basis, but also as symbolic presences of the collective concept of public.
As the public participates in the acknowledging of the art event, the public also participates in the making of it, since the social aspect is part of the concept exercised here. Therefore, art event and public reality undergo an interdependent experience. The intention is double: 1. From Architecture (urban conditions) to question Art (the meaning of it). 2. From Art (the making of it) to question Architecture (urban experiences).
The project will be a global ‘Wandering’ and will involve the installation of many separate pieces by the 10 different artists in public spaces throughout Rotterdam and São Paulo. These pieces will be parallel urban actions, based in the artists' experience in their own resident city, and intended to both update and expand on the perspectives offered by São Paulo. The hope is to truly represent the diversity of urban experiences by getting outside of the obvious and reaching unexpected emotional states.
Organisation
Perambulação is curated by Daniela Hochman Labra and Sonia Cillari. Perambulação is organised by Mirta Demare and Sonia Cillari in the Netherlands, and Daniela Hochman Labra in Brazil.
Links
http//:perambulacao.blogspot.com
Perambulação will investigate the notion of Art in the Public Domain in two cities: Rotterdam and São Paulo. A group of artists from Rotterdam and São Paulo/Rio will exchange ideas and work together on a number of interventions in order to articulate the role of art in society.