MomentoMonumento

A week after my trip out to Morro da Macumba, I had the opportunity to visit a very different sort of urban revitalization project. MomentoMonumento
 was conceived by two French art and architecture collectives, Coloco and Exyzt, to transform an abandoned 22-story glass office building in Sao Paulo’s decayed downtown into a multi-use, multidisciplinary “event building and cultural laboratory” where artists, social organizations, and the public would collaborate. 

By chance, one of my Portuguese classmates was here in Brazil as one of the producers of the project and invited me for a visit. Since the site is not yet open to the public, this was quite a treat. I was shocked to hear that about 30% of usable building space in Sao Paulo's downtown is empty. Walking to the MomentoMonumento building, Edificio Wilton Paes de Almeida, through downtown Sao Paulo, this emptiness was evident. So many beautiful buildings boarded up or falling down. And despite the many pedestrian streets and plazas and parks, there were few places to sit and take it in. 

The Wilton Paes de Almeida building stood out amongst its early-20th century neighbors for its modernity. The idea of MomentoMonumento was to "activate" this abandoned space, once headquarters for a glass company, then property of the federal police. My friend and I were joined by French photographer Franck Gerard  who was in Sao Paulo for the exhibition Arte Fragil, Resistencias.  The three of us explored each of the building's 22 floors. Some were empty, others contained forgotten office furniture, dust and smog-encrusted type writers, boxes of archives (including some interesting contraband!), even an old dentist chair. It all felt very post-apocalyptic. MomentoMonumento hasn't yet begun to occupy the space, but it will be interesting once they do. 

The best part of the climb up was the view from the roof--a panorama of Sao Paulo's never-ending cityscape. 

Morro da Macumba: Art and Community Development

One Friday in June, I took a bus an hour outside of the city to the residential park of Cocaia, one of many low-income communities clustered to the south of Sao Paulo. I was invited by Jonato and Paula, who grew up in the area, to visit their graffiti mural project, Morro da Macumba. The objective of Morro da Macumba was to “tell the history of the neighborhood’s construction” through a multimedia mural while beautifying the run-down neighborhood.

The visit to the exterior communities was eye opening for me. Though Cocaia has infrastructure like public transportation, electricity, and public schools, the trash collection is all but non-existent and makeshift houses are stacked up one atop the other. 

The Morro da Macumba mural took about a year to complete and involved collecting oral histories from residents, new and old, and involving the community in the creation of the mural and sculptures, relying heavily on found objects in the neighborhood (the tree pictured below is made from leaves cut from plastic bottles). The result is a colorful mural that parades along the facades of residences and businesses, and depicts the history of Cocaia from its undeveloped natural state, to the arrivals of immigrants from the northeast of Brazil, to the growth and evolution of the community and its residents. Opposite the main mural are written the oral testimonies they recorded from the local residents, many of whom were founders of the community.

Paula and Jonato told me about the community’s reaction to the project. Many residents who didn’t live on the mural route decided to paint their own homes or try their hands at graffiti. Teenagers who helped the artists on the project have been given their own walls to design elsewhere in the neighborhood. The residents have gotten used to outsiders, including foreigners like myself, visiting their neighborhood. The mural has become a source of local pride and identity.

The artists of Morro da Macumba will soon be headed to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they will be in residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute. They hope to realize a related project within the immigrant community there. 

Fofinho

Forget Bossa Nova, Tropicália, Samba, and Afoxé, my first two musical experiences here have defied my stereotypes about Brazilian culture. Last Sunday I witnessed Brazilian hip hop at Casa das Caldeiras, last night I experienced old school Brazilian rock n' roll at Fofinho.

My Brazilian friend G. invited me to join her and her boyfriend at Fofinho Rock Club, headquarters of the Sao Paulo rock scene of the 1970s and 1980s, to hear Made in Brazil, one of Brazil’s first rock bands.

The concert was scheduled to start at 10 pm, but at 10:30, when we arrived, people had just started to form a line outside the door. We found most of the fans at the bar next door, singing along to the Led Zeplin playing on the juke box. The median age: 45. The look: lots of leather and lots of hair. Nostalgia ran thick. Made in Brazil was releasing their first album since 2001, “Rock de Verdade” (True Rock), and people were excited.

Sadly, I didn’t get to rock out to Made in Brazil. We only made it through three of the four opening acts by 1:30 am. But I got a good introduction to Brazilian rock classics and enjoyed a few lively renditions of American and British rock anthems (“I like smoke and lighting, heavy metal tunder!”). Hair flew, air guitars wailed, and good times were had by all, even if I did catch a few yawns from the old rockers, struggling to keep up with memories of their younger selves. 

 

 

Feira livre

My first week's adventures involved a trip to the neighborhood open air market or feira livre. Every Thursday, until about 2 in the afternoon, vendors of just about everything you could imagine eating line three blocks here in Jardims. 

My first stop at the market was at the pastel stand. Pastels are rectangular pockets of fried dough filled with an item of your choosing. I chose meet per the young salesgirl's recommendation and did not regret it. Each stand was surrounded by business people on their lunch breaks munching these savory tarts. My host here told me they were the descendants of Sao Paulo's first Asian immigrants and I the dough did bear a resemblance to an egg roll wrapper.

Without any grocery list, I took my piping hot pastel and strolled down the market aisles. Right and left the vendors called out, "buy these limes," "over here little pretty one," "mangos!," "do I have a deal for you little white girl!" I stopped at a fruit stand and was immediately surrounded by two scheming vendors, quick to realize my foreignness. I told them I wanted to try some fruit. Right and left they cut me pieces of the strangest and most delicious sorts of tropical fruit--fuschia-hued pitaya, tart, seedy maracuja, which I ate with a spoon fashioned from a piece of the fruit's own peel, red-organge caqui, and the most bizarre specimen of fruit, dark maroon shell on the outside with white, garlic-clove shaped flesh on the inside. 

This last fruit, whose name I immediately forgot, was pushed on me by the box-full by my attentive salesmen (it was the most expensive, of course). The men had a nice a good cop/bad cop routine going where the gruffer of the pair pushed fruit on me and the younger, cuter one assured me seductively that he'd give me a real deal. I had to stretch my Portuguese to its limits to walk away from with just the two bags of fruit I could afford and not the entire stand!

The fruits were by far the highlight of my visit. I also bought literally an armful of broccoli rabe for about a dollar, two bundles of fresh herbs, a bag of fragrant limes, and some plain old tomatoes. Unfortunately, I had neglected to bring along a wheeled, metal basket to transport my goods back home--another clear indicator of my tourist status. Next time, I'll be ready.

(image shows pitaya, also known as dragon fruit)

Beleza!

Beleza is Portuguese for beauty. It's also, as I've learned in class, an expression for all things good:

You correctly utilize an impersonal pronoun in Portuguese class--Beleza!

You cut into a perfectly ripe papaya--Beleza!

You cross the intersection without being run over by a speeding motorbike--Beleza!

You successfully order lunch at the lanchonete--Beleza!

These were today's triumphs. Beleza!

Pixacao

The first thing I noticed during the cab ride into Sao Paulo from the airport yesterday was the graffiti. Not only was it everywhere I looked, adorning the facades of public housing and warehouses and corporate offices, but it was like nothing I had seen before. I'm no scholar of graffiti, but the spindly, angled lettering of consistent height and width, seemed something of another world.

Lucky for me, I spent most of the rest of the day surrounded by urban artists--hip hop and break dancers, Djs, and taggers who had come out to the art space where I'm based for a day of free music and art making--who were all too pleased to tell me about pixacao (pee-sha-sao), Sao Paulo's signature graffiti script. Pixadores are their own breed of taggers and mostly work within a large crew to tag whole building fronts. The taller the building facades, the taller the building, more prestigious the tag. The form of the script was influenced by heavy metal album coversof the 80s (though someone told me its roots extended prior to the the 60s and 70s). 

I found a good video clip explaining pixacao in English on Youtube. You can see some of the fate-tempting acrobatics these pixadores go through to make their mark. It stands in stark contrast to some of the more "traditional" graffiti art I saw on walls and building sides, which is making its way into the mainstream art market. I hope to post some pictures of this as I spot it in the city. 

Good-bye, Harlem

New York doesn't make it easy to leave, especially in early summer. I took one last walk through my neighborhood, up to the circus of 125th St., where the crowds strolled along, pausing to look at the street vendors' wares from incense to commemorative Obama T-shirts, over to Morningside Park, filled with lazy birthday parties and family barbecues under the plush green canopy, and back to Frederick Douglass Blvd. where the high afternoon sunlight glistened off a parade of unhurried gypsy cabs. For me, this is my neighborhood at its finest. I'll miss it.