Art@Site www.artatsite.com  BijaRi Green Cars Sao Paulo
Artist:

BijaRi

Title:

Green Cars

Year:
2009
Adress:
multiple sites
Website:
www.artsy.net:
'Green Car' is part of a series of urban interventions aimed at transforming abandoned cars into flower boxes, that is, transforming waste into urban furniture. The piece presented here is a version with optical graphics - typical of the current phase of BijaRi - and refers to issues of green urbanism.

www.instituteforpublicart.org:
Green Cars is an initiative by BijaRi, a multidisciplinary creative collective of Sào Paulo, Brazil. As part of this series, the group of creative professionals has installed eleven works throughout Sào Paulo, in other Brazilian cities, and in the European city of Graz in Austria. Each work consists of a car stripped of its insides, planted with vegetation, and left in a public place. Some cars also include green lights to illuminate them at night.
Since 2000, much of BijaRi's work has taken the form of video, new media, motion graphics, and digital technology. Their client list includes Coca-Cola, Ford, Trident, and HBO, and they have produimpressive public light and video displays on stages, bridges, and buildings. These works have included a video production to celebrate Sào Paulo's 425th anniversary, which was projected onto a water fountain (Ibirapuera Park Fountain, 2013), an interactive video work for Absolut Vodka (2011) in which participants could 'draw' on a blank canvas through motion activation, and a 262-foot LED video screen for the Planeta Terra events of 2011. These stunning displays are just a small sample of the many technologically advanced and artistically innovative works in BijaRi's portfolio.
In addition to these astounding and visually appealing feats of technology, the group has also produced simple, elegant, and often somewhat humorous public art interventions aimed at social and political commentary. An example in this vein is Chicken (2002), in which two live chickens were released in two busy public spaces ''one upper-class area, one working-class neighborhood''as a means of interrupting the daily routerns of both publics. Green Cars is similar in its aim, though perhaps less controversial. The project is part of a larger body of work called Urban Nature (2007-present), in which urban structures''such as billboards, garbage bins, and even a bus''are turned into gardens of lush greens.
Green Cars is compelling in several ways. The first is the most apparent: the tension between urban and natural space. As the old cars are stripped of their technology and man-made parts, then filled with plants, they become green, living, breathing organisms in contrast to their original purpose. They are there for the contemplation of passersby, highlighting the dichotomy of the built and the natural. In this sense they act as much public art does''as a monument to an idea to be observed, considered, and appreciated. Beyond this, however, is their function within the public realm. Some of the installations are reported by locals and removed by the city almost immediately after installation, making them a symbolic remof the tension between art and politics. Some were reported but not removed for weeks or months''reminders of a sometimes broken municipal system. Still other carswere adopted by people in their neighborhood, who take responsibility for their maintenance and use them as a gathering space. The work, then, offers us insight into art in the public realm. For some members of the public, Green Cars was seen as an unnecessary blight on their street, or, perhaps, as unnecessary usage of a parking space. Others took ownership of the works, embraced their message, and put them to good use. These reactions''from the utilitarian to the libertarian''take place whenever art enters into the public realm. The work's layers make for an interesting, innovative, and poetic case study.
Source: Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts

www.urbanlivinglab.net:
The project called 'Green Cars' addresses two main issues that are on the basis of BijaRi's interpretation of Sào Paulo's urban context and politics.
Oit proposes forms of highlighting the need for rethinking the relation between Nature (in the sense of urban ecology and the relation to the natural landscapes, resourses and rhythms) and the dynamics of major cities.
On the other side, it is also a critique on the ways the city's morphology has been shaped to the imperatives of the car industry and its performance, thus promoting an 'Automobile Culture' which values are ones such as exclusiveness, individuality, status and alienation in relation to the public in a broader sense.
The strategy for undertaking these interventions has been spotting abandoned automobiles in the cityscape whose vessels are converted into big green pots. These spots have, in most cases, become places for gathering local residents who also take on the responsibility for maintaining them.
There is almost a different history for each one of them, though they were all under illegal situation on the streets.
There were cases that highlighting the abandoned situation car through the intervention, make neighbors complain for their removal, mainly for their fear that the new set up will perpetuate the situation of a 'abandoned' car stealing a place to park on their streets.
There were cases when people complain about the healthy issues fearing that it attracts mosquitoes (something take we prevent by making holes on the bottom of the frame for draining the water from rains that usually washes our tropical city).
There were cases when the Green Cars were removed by the municipality. We always try to photograph this removals and display on social medias and the press for is turns out to trigge the discussion on the issues we are trying to unveil.
On the other side, in more busy areas, it also functions as a urban reference where people make appointments to join. This is the case of the one that is in front of our studio for one year now.
It is interesting to notice that in the beginning many people would take away some of the plants, but them, some otherple would 'reimburse' it with new ones, tag it with their names, or even make artistic assemblages which represents a desire of appropriation and empathy that is interesting!
On more residential areas, such as the one we did recently, people (especially kids and youth) get very excited with the 'revitalization' of the street, and appropriate the car as part of their courtyard helping to maintain it.

www.bijari.com.br:
Desculpe-nos, mas este texto está apenas disponà­vel em Inglês Americano.
Nas intervenções da série Carro Verde, que vem sendo realizadas desde 2007, veà­culos abandonados nas ruas de Sào Paulo sào transformados em jardins simbólicos, trincheiras verdes que brotam da lataria recortada de carros, caçambas e à´nibus inutilizados provocando a vertigem de uma outra cidade possà­vel. Possivelmente a nossa!
O projeto de intervençào urbana 'Carros Verdes' aponta duas questões urbanas que nos inquietam enquanto artistas e habitantes. De um lado a necessio entre a ecologia urbana '' os fluxos, recursos, territórios, histórias e ritmos '' e as dinâmicas especulativas de nosso desordenado crescimento urbano.
De outro, se constitui comentário sobre a forma como a morfologia urbana se configurou a partir do imperativo do transporte exclusivo, individual e poluente cujos efeitos se estenderam para além do desenho e dos equipamentos urbanos e se entranharam na nossa própria cultura. O resultado é a automobilizaçào da própria vida resultando em subjetividades isoladas, alienadas e desenraizadas de seu próprio território.
A estratégia dessas intervenções é buscar carros abandonados nas ruas '' veà­culos que degradam o entorno mais próximo da rua '' e convertê-los em pequenas ilhas verdes: abrir, limpar a sujeira, serrar partes, fazer furos na base do chassi para escoar água, forrar de argila e plantar!
Essa operaçào é tanto simbólica '' na medida que cria uma miragem, uma imagem disruptiva da cotidianidade que provoca uma ilul '' como também programática. Elas criam um local onde os moradores e transeuntes se encontram, se apropriam e, de diferentes formas, ajudam a mantê-los como um bem público, uma gentileza urbana compartilhada que enseja uma experiência de convivialidade.

www.urbanlivinglab.net:
Urban Living Lab es una plataforma digital abierta de innovación dedicada a investigar, explorar, reflexionar y divulgar conocimiento y experiencias relacionadas con el territorio, los entornos urbanos y sus ciudadanos. Se estructura a partir de la participación activa y relacional entre personas que investigamos y vivimos en diferentes entornos urbanos alrededor del mundo. Unas realidades urbanas que estudiamos para poder interpretar sus problemáticas y proponer las reflexiones y actuaciones necesarias para la transformaciones y mejoras para sus ciudadanos.