SKELETONS AND CLOSETS

Opportunistic Favela-dwellers are relocating to central Sao Paolo.

Festival Emergences is an international festival dedicated to electronic cultures and emerging artistic forms. Based in Paris, it’s basically a mash-up of performing and visual arts, multimedia, design, architecture and electronic music. A presentation made by mOmentoMoNUMENTO at the annual event last week has got people talking.

mOmentoMoNUMENTO is a joint project between Brazilian collective Coloco and the French experimental artists of Exyst (who we’ve written about before). In 2001, Coloco started researching a phenomenon known as ‘Skeleton Dwellings’. They observed, analysed and documented a group of people that were bucking a trend in Sao Paolo, Brazil. While most people were moving to the suburbs amidst economic unrest, war and the ups and downs of the housing market, a few opportunists seized their chance.

As an alternative to Favela life, they moved into buildings abandoned by construction companies during economic instability. These empty monuments to a bustling city centre were meant to be attractive; and to these people, they still are. They want to be close to the shops and services, so they move in and organise the general functioning of the building. A bathroom and garden for the collective are installed, refuse collection is put in place, and spaces on ground levels are reserved for the elderly. A neighbourly, informal collective is formed.

Sometimes they’re kicked out by city officials. But, increasingly, agreements are starting to be made. The abandonment of the city centre is not good news for the local government and its economy, so more and more of these dwellings are being confirmed as legitimate. Coloco picked up on this unlikely and unintentional collaboration between the construction industry and the people whose invention is fuelled by necessity. They believe it could become a purposeful and intentional collaboration one day. And why not? A safe, simple structure is supplied to a group of inhabitants who then provide their own labour and improve their home bit by bit with the advice of professionals. What a great idea.