intervention
revocation dynamics, crossing axis, metropolis, potency, drawing, Sperry searchlight [1941 model], military brigade, truck, highway, letter, negotiation space, Hdmi lamp, triggering agent, crane, tubular metal structure, stabiliser, electric cable, flow, parabolic mirror, luminous activation, mesh screen, exchange system, duration, penumbra field, activating agent
luminous device: Renato Cury
Arte Cidade Project
Anhangabaú Valley/
São Paulo
the effects resulting from urban space disqualification processes, and their implications in the relations we experience amid this environment are presented as the main references inscribed in this work carried out in the Vale do Anhangabaú – in São Paulo city’s central region, in the mid-1990s. in the face of the growing ‘deterritorialisation’ experienced in metropolises, which unfolds the concept of ‘place’ and announces the occurrence of intersubjective relations that many times dispense with the city as material support, a luminous device was installed in the visible axis of a very busy intersection between humans and machines. its purpose was to address one of the more relevant experiences related to the inhabitants of big cities: the constant oscillation lived in the interior of an interval delimited by notions of identity and anonymity.
the project planned for the installation of two large military searchlights [similar to those used during the 2nd World War] on two 13-metre-high towers, mounted on both sides of the Viaduto do Chá. positioned facing the viaduct, just above the level of the pavement, the projectors cast powerful parallel, pointing in opposite directions beams of light [12,000 watts and 1.5 metres in diameter], which hit the flow of pedestrians perpendicularly. on crossing the beams, people had half of their body intensely illuminated, while the other half dissipated between the buildings, into undefined shadow, which could not be evidenced or registered by any surface.
the intensity of light potentialises the speed experienced in metropolises. the light which allows us to see and identify characterised, with this work, a kind of ‘annulment’. since, on crossing the light beam and having its passage announced, each body also pointed out a situation of erasure… with the non-register of its shadow indicating the impossibility of confirming its presence.
(translation by Lynne Reay Pereira)