The City is Ours, The Body is Mine:
Urban Spatial Practices in Contemporary Latin America
A Conference at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY
April 27, 2015
In summer 2013, a twenty-cent bus fare increase in São Paulo, Brazil sparked immense protests that brought millions to the streets across the country. Exploding into a wide range of demands, the uprisings combined demonstrations, media-activism, participatory works of art, and spontaneous convivial encounters that emphasized bodily presence in urban space.
This day-long interdisciplinary conference examines contemporary engagements with the city as a tool and stage for protest throughout major Latin American cities. Focusing on the potencia of the body and everyday social interactions, participants discuss the possibilities and limitations of creative urban interventions. Presentations also address the legacies of conflictive spatial politics in the region, from the rise of military dictatorships to the subsequent tensions during so-called processes of democratic transition and aggressive neoliberalism.
The conference culminates in a joint keynote lecture by Paola Berenstein Jacques and Fabiana Dultra Britto (both Federal University of Bahia) and an intervention by the Rio-based collective Opavivará. See the full conference schedule for more information.
The conference is convened by Liz Donato, Mya Dosch, and Luisa Valle, PhD students at The Graduate Center, CUNY. The conference is sponsored, in part, by the Rewald Fund of the PhD Program in Art History, The Center for the Humanities, The Committee on Globalization and Social Change, and the Doctoral Students’ Council of The Graduate Center, CUNY
(Image credit: “Brasília, manfiestantes em cima do Congresso Nacional,” Agencia Brasil, used under CC BY 3.0 BR / cropped from original)