A sua pesquisa

This article addresses the interaction between urban regeneration and cultural policies. Planning and developing urban transformation may foster positive and experience design through the experience economy, targeting a cohesive cultural narrative and identity. The discussed case study discussed here concerns the reuse of the AXA Building in the historic center of the city of Porto, in Portugal, as an alternative to classical integrated urban cultural policy and the promotion of free access dynamic leisure activities. In this case, the reuse of a historical building resulted from a hybrid project. Characterized by fusion, the design combined urban rehabilitation, heritage conservation and maintenance, cultural institutions, environments and experiences, social interaction, recreation, and programs aimed at improving the quality of life of both residents and visitors.

There is a need to create a documentation system adapted to facilitate the conservation and restoration of Street Art and Graffiti. Even though they are ephemeral manifestations of art, there have been some signs of the need for preservation mechanisms that would respect their own special features. For selected works we must establish a procedure that enables their preservation with the highest guarantee.

This article addresses the notion of the socially engaged visual arts. The first part explores some fundamental historical periods to help understand this practice, from the Greek concept of teknè until the present time. Then, the idea of a machine for the emancipation of creativity is explained, as well as its operation in two neighborhoods of the Portuguese city of Amadora. Finally, as a result of this immaterial machine, the focus turns to a detailed description of an archive of audiovisual elements that represents each activity undertaken within the project.

Nowadays, walking around any city is a guarantee of seeing graffiti, while the public transportation are still a good canvas for writers. It is a well-established social phenomenon and has catch the attention of ethnographers, academic artists and other scholars that have entered the worlds of graffiti writers to explain their origins, trajectories, motivations, their identity construction, their conception of the self and their role and relation with society at large. However, still there is no synthetic effort of categorisation that provides understandable and communicable approaches to graffiti in the real world. From some sectors graffiti is still something to “deal with”. Generally speaking, authorities and dutyholders consider graffiti as threat a security and safety issue, turning it into something that needs to be addressed. For social workers, for instance, graffiti can be a means of communication with certain youth sectors or even a tool for social cohesion generation. Departing from this perspective, Graffolution was designed: an EC funded project for generating awareness and advance in the provision of best practices for tackling graffiti in Austria, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. The first rule encountered is no-one-size-fits-all and referring to graffiti and graffiti writers, this requires a complex understanding of the phenomenon, their trajectories as well as individual and collective dispositions. The aim of this paper is to provide a consistent typology of graffiti writers, offering a comprehensive picture of whose are the hands behind the graffiti cans. This serves a double level purpose: advancing at the theoretical level putting forward the sociocultural approaches to careers and social backgrounds provided by ethnographic approaches, as well as capturing the complexity of the phenomenon to serve as an operative conceptual basis for practitioners, professionals and decision makers. In doing so, the analysis is made on the transcripts obtained for 22 semi-structured interviews, carried out in the four participating countries. The transcripts have been analysed according to the “persona” methodology, which constitutes a systematic and novel approach and a qualitative technique for clustering information. As a result, three main categories have been defined according to important ambitions, challenges and stages of typical ‘journeys’ or ‘pathways’ of actors. These findings contribute to form a basis of a) highlight the misconceptions around graffiti as a petty crime, and b) offer a guide to understand graffiti writers under a socio-cultural perspective.

Recently there has been a resurgence of murals in several European and American cities. Street art visual practices have privileged murals as one of the most suitable formats to address public spaces. Despite the increasing recognition and significance of murals for the visual culture of these cities, this contemporary urban art practice has not received much attention from recent literature. This paper provides a literature review on contemporary murals, giving an account of their popularity, their relation to location-specificity and global presence, as well as the means of dissemination of such art expression. The study will then focus on a set of case studies in Lisbon, regarding the paradigmatic shift from sculpture commissioning to mural commissioning within Portuguese Brazilian cultural relationships. The works of OSGEMEOS, Bicicleta sem Freio and Nunca will be discussed in this framework, questioning what the contributions of contemporary mural works might be for the public spaces of the city.

En fechas recientes descubrí términos útiles para la investigación que realizo: la literatura transatlántica, utilizada en los estudios iberoamericanos, y la ecología de la literatura, usada en estudios de literatura comparada. El primer término se refiere a las afinidades y choques continuos que tienen autores capaces de navegar en varias lenguas y culturas, tal es el caso de Jorge Eduardo Eielson. De origen peruano, Eielson vivió gran parte de su vida en Europa, concretamente en Francia e Italia, aunque visitaba Perú más o menos regularmente y viajó brevemente a Estados Unidos. Todo lo anterior resulta útil si se piensa que los poemas y las instalaciones emblemáticas de Eielson encierran la fusión de culturas marginales: los quipus (nudos en quechua) rinden homenaje a las culturas precolombinas oriundas del Perú, pero también son consecuencia de una marcada influencia oriental, particularmente de las lecciones taoístas y algunas referencias anticonceptuales del budismo zen. Sorprende aún más saber que las lecciones de Oriente parecen haber llegado vía Estados Unidos, gracias a la New York School.

Este volumen nace con el propósito de producir conocimiento crítico sobre las prácticas poéticas en el espacio público, sus funciones y su eficacia dentro de éste. A la inestabilidad funcional de la poesía y lo lírico en la actualidad se une la noción de espacio público, entendida tanto desde su vertiente conceptual, filosófica y social, como desde su vertiente material, física, ligada a la (re)presentación escénica. Espacios, sujetos e instituciones se redefinen de la mano de esta combinación. Así, la inclusión de la espacialidad en una teoría poética actualizada, la constitución de nuevos sujetos y subjetividades y la identificación de públicos y prácticas en torno a los conceptos de performatividad e intervención constituyen los vectores fundamentales de este libro. Sin acotación de ningún tipo en términos lingüísticos, nacionales o interartísticos, los trabajos aquí recogidos se reparten entre lo teórico-crítico y metodológico, los estudios de caso y las reflexiones en primera persona, teniendo como objetivo último la valoración de la incidencia de la poesía en el espacio público y sus efectos socio-políticos.

Para começar a falar de “contaminações”, vou relatar uma viagem e uma performance que realizei. No dia 22 de junho de 2007, contrariando todos os conselhos de amigos, médicos e parentes, peguei um avião de Paris para Kiev, na Ucrânia, e de lá parti de carro, com um guia e mais duas pessoas, para Pripyat, a cidade fantasma onde houve em 1986 a famosa catástrofe de Chernobyl. Era uma viagem cheia de riscos, claro. Na cidade, a mais afetada pelo acidente, não se pode morar, não se pode comer, não se pode ficar muito tempo. Ali estávamos expostos a uma média de 130 microroentgens por hora de radiação gama, proveniente do césio que paira no local. Isso nos permitiria ficar, no máximo, duas horas. Ficamos quase seis. Apesar de não ser uma cidade propria mente turística, a arquitetura uniforme, remanescente do antigo bloco comunista, os edifícios em ruínas e de arestas enferrujadas, os objetos contaminados, deixados pelos mora dores há vinte anos, as ruas invadidas pelo mato causavam um estranho fascínio. Em determinado momento, avisei que eu precisaria me afastar do grupo e, diante do Palácio da Cultura, bem no centro da cidade, realizei a primeira (e provavelmente única edição da) Conferência poético-radioativa de Pripyat. A conferência contava com abertura solene, leitura de poemas meus e de Paul Dehn “poeta que escreveu sobre e sob a era atômica” e com o “abandono” de alguns livros no lugar. Ali, na solidão daquela conferência de um homem só, a milhares de quilômetros de qualquer coisa familiar, circundado pelo silêncio do fim do mundo, eu fazia, ainda que sem saber, um hino às contaminações, além, claro, de me contaminar, tornando-me, provavelmente, o primeiro poeta radioativo do mundo. Sim, haviam me alertado do risco de desenvolver um câncer ou gerar um filho anormal. Mas pergunto: não faria isso também parte da performance?

The article presents the celebrated peleja (verse exchange) between Inácio da Catingueira and Romano da Mãe d'Água in the Brazilian North-East. The polemic peleja de cordel (a kind of chapbook), which evokes a poetic contest that allegedly took place in 1874 or 1875 in Recife, is regarded as the first of a kind that forms one of the most important phases in Brazilian cordel literature. On the one side stands a slave poet and on the other a landowner; each aims to defend and to characterize the race and social class to which he belongs. The article aims to demonstrate the influence of scientific thinking in popular literature, particularly with regard to ethnic and cultural miscegenation.