2006 Homemade Urban Architecture
Blind Door, Blind Window - Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Architecture is a multidimensional construction that adds physical functionality. This can be for purposes of living, work or leisure. Form enhances the intended function. Creating architecture in many cases is an exclusive activity to it's creator: the architect. But cannot everybody be an architect and create his own architecture? Yes, we all can. To be able to do this man has invented chalk, rope and above all Duct Tape. Its that wide, strong, colored, grey, black or white waterproof tape to stick cables to the ground or fix things in your house, or repair a tear in your sleeping bag. It is also functions as the do it yourself, be an architect anywhere, anyplace, anytime building material neatly rolled up in a conveniently easy to transport and easy to rip-and-paste format. Anyone can be an architect now. Just get out your Duct Tape and start constructing.
So, what shall we build? Well, anything that adds to our world of experience, anything that adds to the understanding of our universe. Any composition that you feel gives you an extra hold on reality as we know it!
The example I will give is an urban intervention in Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro. An installation I did this February. The installation, named 'Blind Door, Blind Window', is the latest work within an existing series of 'Territories', where I use Duct Tape to create demarcations and Urban Architecture in public space. In this case the installation investigates relationships influenced by the inequality in Brazil, especially in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
Waking up from a deep sleep by gunfire just beside the house. At least it seems that way. The hill that I am on may amplify the sounds that come from the three favelas that are situated just on the other side of the street. I am in a Bed-and-Breakfast, Cama e Cafe, on a lush green hillside of Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro. Smack in the middle of town on one of the many little mountains the city is built on. Most of these hills have the favelas sticking out like neon signs. They are infinitely big billboards like shimmering Christmas trees when the heat of the day slowly fades away. But it does not cool down. The whole city is cooked up like a frying pan so it stays hot, no matter how many cold showers you take. Semi-automatic gunfire at 4:30 in the morning, at 8 in the morning, at 3 in the afternoon, any time of day. You get used to it, or not really. Every time it gets closer than before, maybe not closer but louder. These are the moments you don't get used to. There is a road that goes down to Lapa, a neighborhood full of samba and street bars and hotdog stands where people dance in the streaming tropical rain, like in a pagan ritual. Semi-automatic and then a single shot, and then some more semi-automatic. People walk on the other side of the road, out of range of a stray bullet. No problem here. There maybe, they say, and when you are there they say the same about here. Just now, as I write this, again about six shots sound loudly through the open window. Strange, it feels almost comforting, maybe the distance, maybe the regularity.
On the second or third day after arriving in Rio I am having coffee in the art school at Parque Lage. Anja makes them give us a piece of cake they baked for the next day's breakfast. The place we are in is of a classic build. Pillars all around a square courtyard, huge silent water in the middle. Some Portuguese king built this for his lover so she could stand on the balcony above the open void and practice singing, she loved to sing.
A dark, strong, tall man with a worried face. Anja invites me with one hand held out towards me. Meet, she says. Marcos. I shake his hand. We talk about his new movie that will be screened here next day, Estamira. She is 63 years old, picking garbage on a disposal on Campo Grande, far away from here, far away from the picture perfect side of Rio. Her face twists, her mouth shouts drops of spit sometimes, but she is wise. I feel connected to her. Marcos says many people who see the film do. They ask him for her phone number. He spent four years filming Estamira in her house and working on the belt. Estamira surrounded by the birds, stretching her hand out to the wind, as to stop it, with thousand of things twirling around and chasing the birds. The birds that are always there, picking garbage side by side with men and women, their backs always bent. And then the birds fly away and then the people stay. And of the 2000 working there every day twenty sleep on the belt Monday till Friday because it is too far to travel home. And the people told Marcos they are happy to work there, happy to be their own, to do honest work.
Sometimes it is the sound of gunshots, sometimes it is the cracking of fireworks that are lit to say something is coming or something has to be done or danger or the rivaling drug dealers are getting close, possibly trying to take over this piece of territory. The dog barks. He is afraid of the noise. A very friendly Doberman, guards my bed and my breakfast. I hide behind a huge wall, a huge blind wall like a fort. Many houses have these walls. It is for protection or discouragement of the other side of the street, or both. It makes you feel pretty safe. The wall is high, the gates are thick of steel, the locks are plenty. You get used to it, the high walls, the thick steel, the locks of plenty. You get used to the gunshots. You get blinded to them, like you're behind a blind door and behind a blind window. Like a door and a window that maybe not even really exist. That are only there if you want to see them, only if you really want.
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