Rotterdam
Perambulação is a long term artistic project focusing a wide approach of social, economic and political aspects of two metropolis: Rotterdam and São Paulo. Considering those extremely different urban contexts, Perambulação provokes insights about the way social and cultural structures affect ordinary life as well as the role of art making in society.
Starting from practice, Perambulação allows artists to interpret their own unique perspectives, exchanging at the same time impressions with local artists. Each section is presented in a comprehensive manner, allowing the artists not only to learn from this experience, but also to research for themselves. This investigation is carried out through linking the information of each project in order to provide new interpretations of the (public or private) social, human and political situations involved.
During May-June 2005, a group of young Brazilian artists dealing with political and social issues in their work, spent 18 days in Rotterdam experiencing local life and art thinking. The group was invited to take part of the 2nd Architecture Biennale which central theme, "The Flood", was integrated to the project as a framework for analyzing the Holland/ Rotterdam social configurations.
The word "flood" had different meanings. So that, the project - as a work-in-process - generated many ideas which artists turned into site-specifics, photographs, performances, drawings, actions, videos, and some art projects quite unattainable.
Perambulação project’s heart is to foster discussions starting from visual material collected from urban space by the artists, and not just to promote unexpected aesthetic situations for the passerby. In Perambulação the city landscape, more than an environment for impacting public interventions, is the background for artistic reflection in different media.
It is expected that in 2006 a group of Dutch artists will spend a month in São Paulo in order to develop the second part of the project. Meetings with Brazilian artists and scholars will be arranged aiming to give a paramount understanding of public/private spaces from social, economic and political perspectives in Brazil, and its relationship with the visual arts as critical strategy in the urban context.
Daniela Labra, Brazil
Final presentation
