Art, space and the reinvention of everyday life

About this event

The talk explores the significance of building occupation for the dual purposes of housing and artistic production. It specifically highlights the experience of São Paulo's Ouvidor 63, an eight-year occupation of a 13-story building from the 1940s located in the city centre.

Following the talk, there will be a screening of an excerpt from the film Ouvidor (2023), and artists-activists involved in the project will be present for discussion.

About the project

Ouvidor 63 is currently the largest artistic occupation in Latin America, and it houses 100 resident artists, organized collectively. The project locates its experience in a longer, global history of artistic occupations, with reference points to occupations in Europe and the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s, as well as Brazil’s own long history of occupations. The project identifies, explores and maps a number of processes of "world-making" at Ouvidor 63: social and aesthetic practices that the occupation specifically makes possible. These include art training practices that take place in the building's spaces and workshops, some unique hybridizations of artistic languages, new practices of management and decision-making, and new forms of international exchange. The project shows how the unique experience of Ouvidor 63 can contribute to the development of art history, theory and criticism, challenge its traditional methods and narratives in art history, bringing new elements, practices and contexts to the public debate.

Speakers

Pedro Fiori Arantes is an architect and urban planner, and a professor of Art History at the Federal University of São Paulo. He is the Principal Investigator (P-I) in a research project with the Ouvidor Cultural Occupation, where he has been developing laboratories and extension projects since 2021. As part of the Usina collective, he works with housing movements and landless movements in the self-managed construction of housing, schools, community centres, and agrarian reform settlements. He is the author of several books on architecture, the city, and politics, including The Rent of Form: Architecture and Labor in the Digital Age. Foreword by Reinhold Martin. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019.

Tássia do Nascimento is a Co-Investigator (Co-I) researcher and a postdoctoral fellow in Art History at the Federal University of São Paulo, participating in the research team on Ouvidor 63. She holds a PhD in Literary Science from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a Master's in Literary Studies from the State University of Londrina. She is also a teacher in the public school system of São Paulo. Her research focuses on Black and feminist literature.

Sol Emanuel Calderón is a Colombian video artist and has been a resident of the Ouvidor 63 Occupation since 2014. He holds a degree in Fine and Visual Arts from the Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá, Colombia, and a Teaching Degree in Visual Arts from Estácio University in São Paulo. He is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Art History at the Federal University of São Paulo and is a member of the same research group.

Micaela Yañez is an Argentine visual artist and has been a resident of the Ouvidor 63 Occupation since 2017. She holds a degree in Graphic Design from the Fundación Gutenberg – Instituto Argentino de Artes Gráficas. She is engaged in undergraduate research at the Federal University of São Paulo and is part of the same research group.

Chair

Dr Giovanna Astolfo, DPU