In this text, Nelson Brissac discusses aspects of current art interventions in what have been called “megacities.” Specifically, he presents as an example the fourth edition of the Arte/Cidade project (2002), which he curated. The event consisted of interventions in east São Paulo, an area subject to the effects of globalization in relation to the urban as well as the artistic. New public policies, especially those involving intervention, are indispensable to megacities like São Paulo as they attempt to respond to the extremely complex situation that current urban configurations entail. Arte/Cidade’s strategy is based on an urban dynamic in a constant process of (re)formation. Its primary aim is to alert the population of certain processes taking place in its milieu. As such, the project incites collective thinking on the major contemporary undertakings that affect and act on the urban environment. 

The Arte/Cidade project, which was curated and organized by Nelson Brissac, took place in São Paulo erratically. It was held in 1994, 1995, 1997, 2002, and then again in 2009.

In the view of philosophy professor Nelson Brissac [Peixoto], the curator and engine behind Arte/Cidade, artistic interventions in the urban space alter the space in order to bring to light the complex sociopolitical, economic, and institutional situations that ensue in current times. Since 1994, the Arte/Cidade group, which is formed by architects and artists, has been geared to discussions of the new configuration of cities and the space in which cultural institutions are immersed. In east São Paulo, what is called the Block of Interventions Arte/Cidade - Zona Leste emerged in 2002 out of concern with real estate speculation in that section of the city due to a large number of empty lots that are often occupied in a disorderly fashion. In his text, Brissac places great emphasis on the need for tactics and strategies in urban art interventions in today’s megacities. Because the scale of the context in which these phenomena unfold grows so rapidly, earlier approaches have ceased to be relevant.

Nelson Brissac presented two essays on the Arte/Cidade project that discuss the process of globalization in large urban centers and responses to it: “Arte brasileira na era da globalização” (1996) [doc. no. 1111334], and “Intervenções urbanas” (1998) [doc. no. 1110702].