Derivas [Drifts] is an erratic stroll, a sidelong gaze at the city of São Paulo. It is about allowing oneself to get lost amid the flows, speed, and signs of the urban environment in an attempt to gain visibility beyond the surface opacity of the metropolis. Records of circulation and engagement with urban space, revealed by seven artists provoked by the restlessness of those who inhabit a city that cannot be fully grasped, a condition that leads us to reinvent a personal city within the given city.
Contemporary thinking about urban space requires a more complex and less romanticized counterpart to the iconography that represents cities. The pictorial tradition of broad-scope landscapes, modes, and customs of the population that underlie the photo documentation of cities seems no longer sufficient for the intricate web of meanings that emerges from major metropolises.
To find meaning beyond the banalization of codes, the shifting landscape, and the spectacularization of big cities, attention must be directed not to what presents itself as it is but to what does not manifest as an autonomous image. It is necessary to peel away the various layers of the city, discover the multiple cities overlaid in layers by time and the singular experience of spaces, to decipher some enigmas that lead us to better understand and attribute some meaning to the constructed territory we inhabit.
Living in a metropolis means navigating through instability, inconstancy, and multiplicity. Our “drifts” did not unfold as the situationalist exploration technique—popularized in the 1950s, advocating the participation of city inhabitants through “passionate circulation”—but they resonate with that form of contact with the city. Experiences that shape a particular cartography of São Paulo.
The seven artists invited for this undertaking formed a discussion group that, for three months, deliberated with the organizers on texts by thinkers such as Michael Sorkin, Paul Virilio, Marc Augé, and Italo Calvino, among others, as a starting point.
With this established field of reflection, the artists began to develop project proposals that, discussed within the group, generated new concepts and expanded the possibilities of the proposed theme. Thus, curation also occurred as a drift, not selecting works that fit the theme but provoking situations for them to be created, thereby configuring a record of the city.
Eder Chiodetto is a journalist, photography editor for the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, and author of the book “O Lugar do Escritor” (Cosac & Naify, 2002).
Marta Bogéa is an architect, having designed the architecture for exhibitions such as “Arte Cidade 3” (São Paulo, 1997) and “Imagética” (Curitiba, 2003), among others. She is the author of the book “Two-way Street: The Paulista Avenue Flux and counter-flux of modernity (SDSU Press, 1995)
Derivas [Drifts] is an erratic stroll, a sidelong gaze at the city of São Paulo. It is about allowing oneself to get lost amid the flows, speed, and signs of the urban environment in an attempt to gain visibility beyond the surface opacity of the metropolis. Records of circulation and engagement with urban space, revealed by seven artists provoked by the restlessness of those who inhabit a city that cannot be fully grasped, a condition that leads us to reinvent a personal city within the given city.
Contemporary thinking about urban space requires a more complex and less romanticized counterpart to the iconography that represents cities. The pictorial tradition of broad-scope landscapes, modes, and customs of the population that underlie the photo documentation of cities seems no longer sufficient for the intricate web of meanings that emerges from major metropolises.
To find meaning beyond the banalization of codes, the shifting landscape, and the spectacularization of big cities, attention must be directed not to what presents itself as it is but to what does not manifest as an autonomous image. It is necessary to peel away the various layers of the city, discover the multiple cities overlaid in layers by time and the singular experience of spaces, to decipher some enigmas that lead us to better understand and attribute some meaning to the constructed territory we inhabit.
Living in a metropolis means navigating through instability, inconstancy, and multiplicity. Our “drifts” did not unfold as the situationalist exploration technique—popularized in the 1950s, advocating the participation of city inhabitants through “passionate circulation”—but they resonate with that form of contact with the city. Experiences that shape a particular cartography of São Paulo.
The seven artists invited for this undertaking formed a discussion group that, for three months, deliberated with the organizers on texts by thinkers such as Michael Sorkin, Paul Virilio, Marc Augé, and Italo Calvino, among others, as a starting point.
With this established field of reflection, the artists began to develop project proposals that, discussed within the group, generated new concepts and expanded the possibilities of the proposed theme. Thus, curation also occurred as a drift, not selecting works that fit the theme but provoking situations for them to be created, thereby configuring a record of the city.
Eder Chiodetto is a journalist, photography editor for the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, and author of the book “O Lugar do Escritor” (Cosac & Naify, 2002).
Marta Bogéa is an architect, having designed the architecture for exhibitions such as “Arte Cidade 3” (São Paulo, 1997) and “Imagética” (Curitiba, 2003), among others. She is the author of the book “Two-way Street: The Paulista Avenue Flux and counter-flux of modernity (SDSU Press, 1995)