In an ongoing collaboration, I am participating in 'Jardim de passagem', an artistic intervention proposed and realised by Teresa Siewerdt.
On a particular bus route in São Paulo, in the last instance, a route from the Santo Amaro terminal to the Pinheiros terminal, a person stands with a plant waiting at a bus stop. As the bus follows its route, one by one, these people get on the bus, holding a large plant.
In this way, to the surprise, annoyance, or curiosity of the other passengers, an ephemeral garden is created on the bus, as it winds its way from one part of São Paulo to another. At the Pinheiros terminal, everyone gets off and people with plants offer them to other passengers, as a gesture that touches on the relationships that have been created in this ephemeral community.
Through a myriad of leaves and flowers, Teresa Siewerdt's project touches on open-ended questions of community, public/private space, and the ephemerality of gestures and relations. In donating the plant at the end of the bus' route, the intervention points to the idea of the gift, and the the relations that it can make possible, within the framework of an artistic exchange.
On a particular bus route in São Paulo, in the last instance, a route from the Santo Amaro terminal to the Pinheiros terminal, a person stands with a plant waiting at a bus stop. As the bus follows its route, one by one, these people get on the bus, holding a large plant.
In this way, to the surprise, annoyance, or curiosity of the other passengers, an ephemeral garden is created on the bus, as it winds its way from one part of São Paulo to another. At the Pinheiros terminal, everyone gets off and people with plants offer them to other passengers, as a gesture that touches on the relationships that have been created in this ephemeral community.
Through a myriad of leaves and flowers, Teresa Siewerdt's project touches on open-ended questions of community, public/private space, and the ephemerality of gestures and relations. In donating the plant at the end of the bus' route, the intervention points to the idea of the gift, and the the relations that it can make possible, within the framework of an artistic exchange.
auflynn [at] arts.ucla.edu
Alex Ungprateeb Flynn is an Associate Professor at the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, University of California, Los Angeles. Working as an anthropologist and curator, Alex’s practice explores the intersection of ethnographic and curatorial modes of enquiry. Researching collaboratively with activists, curators and artists in Brazil since 2007, Alex explores the prefigurative potential of art in community contexts, prompting the theorisation of fields such as the production of knowledge, the pluriversal, and the social and aesthetic dimensions of form.