Que Ladeira é essa?
Meaning-making art experience, Ladeira da Preguiça, Salvador of Bahia, Brazil, 2013

This experience of place making, entitled Que Ladeira é essa?, happened at the end of the Ladeira da Preguiça, in the vicinity of Subdivision of Commerce, under the actions of the Movimento Nosso Bairro é o 2 de Julho, in June 2013.

In this experience, I tried to explore my triple condition as an artist, public art scholar and member of the Movimento Nosso Bairro é o 2 de Julho. My participation in the Movement started in early 2013, as a natural consequence of my participation in life in the neighborhood because I shared a studio with an artist friend in Da Forca Street.

A few days after the event, I kept watching the progress of the discussions and the relationship with my work which he had purposely stayed in place. The residents began discussing the hassle that the work was causing, “we are not a graveyard“, and began to break the work, until one of the local leaders broke and threw the rest in a dumpster at the base of slope.

The work consisted of the installation of plasterboard that reproduced the floor pieces of the slope itself. The installation of the work aroused much curiosity as the participation of some residents and children, but also with the irritation of others, who felt threatened or invaded by an alien in every way. Some have asked what the meaning of the work aesthetically and were surprised by the use of the color white, for they saw their own place as a dirty place, marginal and abandoned by the government.

A few days after the event, I kept watching the progress of the discussions and the relationship with my work which he had purposely stayed in place. The residents began discussing the hassle that the work was causing, “we are not a graveyard“, and began to break the work, until one of the local leaders broke and threw the rest in a dumpster at the base of slope.

I have conducted a survey of percepction. Such survey was done at three different times, public and methodology: first, in the days of the event (from assembly to installation until removal of all the material works of art), conducted with people there lived (10 people, 8H and 2M), there is at least one year of direct mode (ie, talking to the interviewees). This time, it was the respondents who came up to me and many of them felt the interviewers themselves, reversing our roles. Generally caused strangeness preparation, the existence or destruction of my work.