Art@Site www.artatsite.com Collective Basurama The City is for Play Sao Paulo
Artist:

Collective Basurama

Title:

The City is for Play

Year:
2007
Adress:
Viadulto do Cha
Website:
www.basurama.org:
The City is For Playing ephemerally hacked two of Sao Paulo's most central highlines for the Virada Cultural festival. Viaduto do Chá and '˜Minhocào' (elevado Costa e Silva) under spaces remain abbandoned decades after their construction and are the perfect examples of wasted spaces of the modernist metropolis.
Just with some swings made of ropes, reused advertisement outdoors and discarded tires, we transformed the use of this wasted spaces into vibrant, playful and diverse Places.
Workers and commuters, who normally avoid the areas, feel atracted by the balance of the giant swings.
Homeless people living under the Viaduto do Chá, started pushing the lonely visitors, receiving some money as gratitude.
'˜Use' is the soul of spaces. As Jane Jacobs announced, places full of people, are safer and happier.

www.instituteforpublicart.org:
The child can imagine a toy on any object and a game in any situation, the imagination is the most funny tool that canhuman being, and when it is in their first years of life is a living and continuousthing, but that loses as growth, development of criteria and facing the problems of adulthood. But contact with the art can awaken many ways related to creativity, this which is closely linked to the imagination, and when it occurs the encounter between art and the environments they create are set where the human being, be of any age, act creatively and intuitive. These environments are not governed by the laws of the adult world: the surface to move is not only the ground, interaction with strangers is possible and waste do not exist.
Basurama, a collective that carries art and design projects for social change through playful and participative strategies. Starring in their projects the reuse of materials derived from waste and processes related to their production in the consumer society. Currently works as a network of established groups in Boston, Buenos Aires, Madrid and Sào Paulo. And as a way of providing a place ofplayfulness and freedom in public space, created the work "The City is For Play", appropriating famous and chaotic places in the city of Sào Paulo, as the 'Viaduto do Chá', in 'Vale do Anhangabaú' and the 'Minhocào' (The highest part of Costa e Silva), both served structure for installing playgrounds created from materials that can be found in abundance in any part of the city as strings, banners and cut discarded tires.
And even made available on the internet the whole process to build them. Providing that any group can replicate the project in other places, making your own neighborhood. The installation was carried out in the 'Festival Baixo Centro' (independent festival of art and culture in Sào Paulo) during the 2013 edition of the 'Virada Cultural' (event sponsored by the Government and City Hall, which provides a wide range of musical, theatrical and artistic attractions in a period uninterrupted 24 hours), and in 2"month of Independent Culture".
The collective, in announcing the work on your website is age appropriate recommendation to play in the installation: toy for children from 0 to 99 years. And in the period in which the installation was present in the city was just that it was possible to see all took advantage of the swings and played much regardless of age or social class, there was even the participation of many homeless people. It was possible in some time to see a long line with people eager to enjoy the work, who helped push the swing, and many onlookers surrounding the place to enjoy the facility, in any case, both the interaction as the assessment is made possible.
With the work, the playful view of the city was not only possible, but also palpable. Amid gray and charged landscape of concrete stiffness and vertical buildings, people were mild, and the playful swing seemed to fly in the midst of 'Vale do Anhangabaú' and each time felt more comfortable in that condition, most drove their bodies to achieve greater heights.And even made available on the internet the whole process to build them. Providing that any group can replicate the project in other places, making your own neighborhood. The installation was carried out in the 'Festival Baixo Centro' (independent festival of art and culture in Sào Paulo) during the 2013 edition of the 'Virada Cultural' (event sponsored by the Government and City Hall, which provides a wide range of musical, theatrical and artistic attractions in a period uninterrupted 24 hours), and in 2015 as part of t"month of Independent Culture".
The collective, in announcing the work on your website is age appropriate recommendation to play in the installation: toy for children from 0 to 99 years. And in the period in which the installation was present in the city was just that it was possible to see all took advantage of the swings and played much regardless of age or social class, there was even the participation of many homeless people. It was possible in some time to see a long line with people eager to enjoy the work, who helped push the swing, and many onlookers surrounding the place to enjoy the facility, in any case, both the interaction as the assessment is made possible.
With the work, the playful view of the city was not only possible, but also palpable. Amid gray and charged landscape of concrete stiffness and vertical buildings, people were mild, and the playful swing seemed to fly in the midst of 'Vale do Anhangabaú' and each time felt more comfortable in that condition, most drove their bodies to achieve greater heights.The work was thought to be something simple to implement and at the same time reuse materials, characteristics that have always been present in Basurama projects. The intention was also to honor two great architects, artists, designers Elvira de Almeida and Lina Bo Bardi, who created this kind of places that awaken the playful and creative. With these inspirations created the site-specific which brings the interaction through the balance of play.
Source: Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts.

www.thecityateyelevel.com:
In December 2012, the Spanish Embassy in Addis Ababa invited Basurama Collective6 to make a children's playground project in the governmental orphanage centre of Kibebe Tsehay, in Addis Ababa.
This orphanage centre is a home and a place of education for children from birth to 8 years old. Here, the children study, sleep, eat, tidy up, and play together with limited space in the centre.
The mission for Basurama Collective in this project was to increase enjoyable moments, impre learning skills, and overall happiness in the children's life using play and play spaces as the main tool and strategy.
The project was initiated with a clear understanding of the need for safe, inclusive functioning, and vibrant play areas for the kids living in the house of the Lost Children.
Physically, the place had a large outdoor space with no trees and contained secondhand play-furniture that was often unusable, broken, and damaged. Piled in a corner of the institution were old cribs and beds, and even some parts of rusty swings.

www.basurama.org:
Basurama is an architectural and artist collective dedicated to research, cultural and environmental creation and production whose practice revolves around the reflection of trash, waste and reuse in all its formats and possible meanings. It was born in the Madrid School of Architecture (ETSAM) in the year 2001 and, since then, it has evolved and acquired new shapes. Our aim is to study those phenomena inherent in the massive producti of real and virtual trash in the consumer society, providing different points of view on the subject that might generate new thoughts and attitudes. We find gaps in these processes of production and consumption that not only raise questions about the way we manage our resources but also about the way we think, we work, we perceive reality.
Far from trying to offer a single manifest to be used as a manual, Basurama has compiled a series of multiform opinions and projects, not necessarily resembling each other, which explore different areas related to trash. We try to establish subtle connections between them so that they may give rise to unexpected reactions. We are not worried about its lack of unity; moreover, we believe it as evocative and potentially subversive values. Besides the visual arts in all its formats Basurama compiles all kind of workshops, talks, concerts, projections and publications.
Basurama acts like a creative linking platform where different agents of the same social network come together. It has created more than 100 projects in the four continents. Its base is in Madrid, but it is also formed by two representative offices in Bilbao (Spain).