Marcelo Cidade
Re: definição de projeto arquitetônico 2 (Re: Definition of Architectural Project 2)
Marcelo Cidade interrogates the city, architecture and urban planning. This architectonic drawing proposes modular possibilities, adaptable variations based on the form of the concrete block (a material which is often actually integrated in his practice). The “re-definition” announced in the title is in construction, in process, under development, in flux. The investigation appears incomplete, but potentially infinite, therefore full of potential. This work is like a claim for the competence of artists to contribute to new visions for society, like a hymn to their capacity for imagination within a larger debate. Cidade offers abstract viewpoints on real societal questions to do with housing and propriety development while pointing to an urgent need for revisiting Brazilian history of Modernist architecture and Neoconcretism.
Marcelo Cidade is an artist of situations, if not a Situationist of a new age, as he drifts through city streets around the world creating actions, interventions, films, photographs or drawings. His interests lie in the possibilities of public space and its connection with the private sphere, he resists forms of constraint and moves freely within the human community and through urban environments. Questioning systems and working in the peripheries or interstices allows Cidade poetic freedom in his artistic practice and open engagement with language, art history and politics. In 2005, he wrote “To resist = to (re) exist” 2000 times in downtown São Paulo.