Arte da Memória [Sao Paulo 2001] Print E-mail
Hoheisel & Knitz


International Kolloquium »Arte Da Memória«, Goethe Institut Sao Paulo
Workshop at the University MariAntonia, Sao Paulo




Sao Paulo, city without memory


was the subject of a workshop we taught in September 2001 in the Centro de Cultura de USP Maria Antonia.
One of the students brought to the first meeting an empty film box and told us: »My memory of this city is like an empty film box. I do not have any pictures of the history or the past of Sao Paulo in my mind«.
Many friends told us: »The people here live only for today, they do not care about the past.«


Every of the students presents his personal memory-work at the end of the workshop at a 5-angle sketch-board [pentagon]
Twelve pentagons joined with angles at each side was in the end a Dodekaeder as a memory-box. The works are included and closed in the platonic form, the fragments of memory disappear again.




Result of the Workshop: closed Memory-Container - Dodecaeder





Content of the Dodekaeder




For our first meeting, i decided to develop two ideas: which meanings could Memory have?
- how it is represented and where could i find it in my quotidian »my relationship with Saõ Paulo lies on my quotidian«?
So, i selected a lamp [an old remembrance], a brick [the noises, constructions and destroying things] and two cardboard boxes [the homelesses of my neighbourhood]. These were my keys to begin.
A lot of questions, thoughts and impressions appeared and people were my foremost incentive: through their histories, i could know Saõ Paulo. What could they tell me? How do they incorporate the city?
I went out [Major Sertório, Dr. Vila Nova, Cesário Mota, General Jardim, Amaral Gurgel, Maria Antônia streets] to interview homelesses, merchants, travesties and co-workers. Only six of them were born in here and only four gave me good references.
My good reference from the city was my painting. While i was preparing it, i thought about mock and i started to make associations between monuments [the way i know] and memory [the way i supose it should be]:

Monument – Fixed – Stopped – Far Off
Memory – Life – Movement – Pulses – Caleidoscope
Yesterday at Goethe Institute, the pictures, the speach and the humanity of those artists thrilled me very deep.
This morning, a walk, new images. Listening to the others i could rescue my own memories.
Juliana Monteiro