Using an arts-based inquiry, Precarious Spaces addresses current concerns around the instrumentality and agency of art in the context of the precarity of daily life. The book offers a survey of socially and community-engaged art practices in South America, focusing in particular on Brazil’s “informal” situation, and contributes much to the ongoing debate of the possibility for change through social, environmental, and ecological solutions. The individual chapters, compiled by Katarzyna Kosmala and Miguel Imas, present a wide spectrum of contemporary social agency models with a particular emphasis on detailed case studies and local histories. Featuring critical reflections on the spaces of urban voids, derelict buildings, self-built communities such as favela, and roadside occupations, Precarious Spaces will make readers question their assumptions about precarity, and life in precarious realms.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Why precarious spaces?
Katarzyna Kosmala and Miguel Imas
Chapter 2: How emergent cultural imaginaries of autonomy and planetarity can reframe contemporary precarity debates
Diana Brydon
Chapter 3: From the precarious to the hybrid: The case of the Maré Complex in Rio de Janeiro
Lilian Fessler Vaz and Claudia Seldin
Chapter 4: Painting free from gentrification: Participatory arts-based interventions in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro
Katarzyna Kosmala
Chapter 5: Beyond aesthetics: Poetics of Autoconstrucción in Mexico City
Benjamin Parry
Chapter 6: FOLi Lab: A museographic urban experiment at the Biennial of Photography in Lima, Peru
Gonzalo Olmos and Valeria Biffi
Chapter 7: OrgansparkZ: Communities of art-space, imagination and resistance
Miguel Imas and Alia Weston
Chapter 8: Pockets of resistance: A look at the Mbyá-Guarani camps in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Cristina Amélia Pereira de Carvalho and Fábio Freitas Schilling Marquesan
Chapter 9: Fábricas Recuperadas in Brazil: Contextual experiences
Jacob Carlos Lima, Aline Suelen Pires and Fernando Ramalho Martins
Chapter 10: New technologies and media activism in Brazil: Reassembling spaces in the context of innovation
Leonardo Vasconcelos Cavalier Darbilly
Chapter 11: Organizing culture in favela Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro: The dynamics of precarity
Alketa Peci, Daniel S. Lacerda and Vanessa Brulon
Chapter 12: A much mended thing: Notes from the North
Cristina Molina and Dean (Rocky) Rockwell
Katarzyna Kosmala and Miguel Imas
Chapter 2: How emergent cultural imaginaries of autonomy and planetarity can reframe contemporary precarity debates
Diana Brydon
Chapter 3: From the precarious to the hybrid: The case of the Maré Complex in Rio de Janeiro
Lilian Fessler Vaz and Claudia Seldin
Chapter 4: Painting free from gentrification: Participatory arts-based interventions in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro
Katarzyna Kosmala
Chapter 5: Beyond aesthetics: Poetics of Autoconstrucción in Mexico City
Benjamin Parry
Chapter 6: FOLi Lab: A museographic urban experiment at the Biennial of Photography in Lima, Peru
Gonzalo Olmos and Valeria Biffi
Chapter 7: OrgansparkZ: Communities of art-space, imagination and resistance
Miguel Imas and Alia Weston
Chapter 8: Pockets of resistance: A look at the Mbyá-Guarani camps in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Cristina Amélia Pereira de Carvalho and Fábio Freitas Schilling Marquesan
Chapter 9: Fábricas Recuperadas in Brazil: Contextual experiences
Jacob Carlos Lima, Aline Suelen Pires and Fernando Ramalho Martins
Chapter 10: New technologies and media activism in Brazil: Reassembling spaces in the context of innovation
Leonardo Vasconcelos Cavalier Darbilly
Chapter 11: Organizing culture in favela Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro: The dynamics of precarity
Alketa Peci, Daniel S. Lacerda and Vanessa Brulon
Chapter 12: A much mended thing: Notes from the North
Cristina Molina and Dean (Rocky) Rockwell