Implementing Public Space

Roberto Cabot : I feel that you create more places than actions in your works. How would you define this idea of “place” in your work?

Opavivará : More than places, it is a question of “situ-action”Situ-ação in the original Brazilian Portuguese.—the place is given by an action in space. We create an envelope which receives an action—a space designed for the intimate relationships which are instigated there, a membrane between the public space and the intimate space. It is a social experiment. The place is thus based more on the relationship between things and people than on its architecture or its vegetation. In our interventions, the space is kept as open as possible to what can happen or not happen. For a space to be genuinely public, it must keep this openness.

Rephrase public space

There are different strata in our work: we choose a public space in the city and insert a device that is either quite minimal or very complex, but which doesn’t replace the people circulating in the place. Sometimes, the device is even camouflaged in the urban fabric and is only brought to life on contact with people. The public is an integral part of the work. For instance, Cozinha Coletiva was described as: “table, gas cooker, chairs, dishes, food, and people.” Individuals are the very bricks and mortar of the architecture of our works. In a way, that runs in direct contrast with modern thought and its very concrete vision of urban planning where the city is a stack of architectural elements, of concrete, etc. Our architecture is based on living cement.

Roberto Cabot : You work in Rio de Janeiro, a very special city where there is considerable confusion between public and private spaces. Does that idiosyncrasy influence your work?

Opavivará : Yes, there is this confusion which forms part of Rio’s identity, but we also work in private and institutional spaces which have their own rules that we put under tension. We are constantly playing on what can or cannot happen in a given place. For instance, the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo invited us for an event combining art and cuisine; they expected to see chefs whereas we wanted to have a kitchen which was open to the public—something they were very concerned about, for health reasons among others. We had to negotiate toe-to-toe with them because their institutional vision went against our understanding of a work of art that interacts with the public.

Part of the concern of our work lies in this reformulation of the spaces where we intervene. The objective is to disrupt the rules governing a given space, to create tensions and membranes enabling other connections. When we intervene in a public space or an institutional place, there is always a regulatory bureaucratic framework which we have to deal with—it’s very much part of our work. There is a form of negotiation where we are told: “Hey, artists! You can do this, but you can’t do that.” We reply that it doesn’t make any sense if we don’t do this, but, OK, we can drop that.

To come back to the rolêzinho phenomenon, it is really interesting because fundamentally the arbitration between public and private spheres is linked to what you want to see in a place. Malls have always wanted to attract as many people as possible, to have people consume things, but suddenly there is the rise of the lower middle-class, which now has some purchasing power, but that creates an issue because they “invade” the place with an unexpected behavior and because they have a different skin tone and another culture. Discriminatory reflexes are never far away. I remember a meeting at the subprefecture, when we had this kitchen on the plaza, they said: “That isn’t cool, you’re attracting hobos to the plaza.” And the City Hall had the same attitude: they hadn’t understood all the facets of this artistic project; they took us for a soup kitchen.

Suggest an experiment   

Roberto Cabot : Exactly. You are dodging the issue a bit but I can understand that. Furthermore, it is very amusing to see that they keep pushing you to do things despite the fact that you are making their life harder… In your way of transforming spaces, there is something else which is very carioca: transienceTransitorio in the original text.. Is it a real strategy within your work?

Opavivará : Opavivará is doing some historic work—not historic in the sense that we are inscribing it in the history of art but rather because our works have a very strong historic component. This issue of transience also comes from the fact that we propose a sort of ritual, an experience which differs from the continuous flow of daily life. People do the same thing everyday and then there is an event, a day of the year where the tribe gathers, does something exceptional which becomes a sort of ritual and we work on that. There lies the meaning of our urban interventions: we suddenly take control of a space, transform it for a short time and make a ritual out of it. Just like with the kitchen on the public square: people start doing things they don’t usually do, understanding the urban space and the world in another way, understanding themselves through the lens of this transformation. That creates a historic moment because it distances itself from repetitive daily routine. Transience is something fundamental in our approach—we aren’t at all trying to build a large imposing monument and make it last forever.

Roberto Cabot : In a way, transience represents genuine duration. Classical three thousand year old buildings have crumbled and humanity continues to exist. I feel this organic approach will last longer than marble…

Roberto Cabot : Even the clothing is different: the dress style changes from the moment you step foot on the sand. On the sidewalk, everyone is dressing up, cleaning their feet to put their shoes on; on the sand, bare feet reign supreme, you remain naked and all goes well. But if you walk around naked in the city center… That’s something very interesting—the setting isn’t the only thing which counts but also what happens in people’s heads: when a guy arrives at the beach, he transforms himself.

Opavivará : What is interesting is also the pattern of occupancy: when the beach is full, that you are barely arriving and you are looking for the best place… It is a completely organic occupation because the City Hall could also mark off a dedicated accessway to the sea, parcel out the beach, etc. Maybe will it become like that because, day after day, they are submitting a bit more to the market… I find it incredible to see how the beach, despite all its invisible membranes, its social clubs, its locations, is a gathering place. You have the place for families, the place for gays, the place for the lower working-class, the clubs—if you want to cross any space, you just need to get through.

But I think our beachfront has a characteristic: it isn’t calm. Many people come from afar, they get there and don’t find quiet because there are hawkers, altinho playersa ball game played on Rio’s beaches... The beach is replete with activities. It is all imbued with Rio’s life. The beach is really a unique and marvelous place and ultimately it becomes strange when it is too calm.

Roberto Cabot : I think the beach also determines what Rio is in the sense that, to come back to economics, the entire logic of real estate prices is under its influence.

Opavivará : But that is also ephemeral and transient—the city hasn’t always been like that. São Cristóvão was the poshest district during the Empire, and then Catete and Grajaú became more trendy…

Roberto Cabot : And there they discovered the beach…

(This article was published in Stream 03 in 2014.)