São Paulo in November will be our last installment for this year. (Beijing, Moscow, and Rome to follow in 2082) São Paulo is a modern city in every sense. Along the huge avenidas you see the fantastic concrete buildings by Oscar Niemeyer, João Batista Vilanova Artigas, or Lina Bo Bardi. But something is missing. Or you get the impression that something would be missing. Advertising! No Posters. No flyers. No ads on buses. No ads on trains. No Adshels, no 48-sheets, no nothing. It sounds like an Adbusters‘ dream. Some years ago the city’s right-wing mayor, Gilberto Kassab, passed the so-called Clean City laws, contrived by city planners around Regina Monteiro. The Brazilian Association of Advertisers called the new laws “unreal, ineffective and fascist.”

With the help of the Goethe Institute we will assemble again an all-female cast of academics and artists who help us create a realistic interpretation for a fictional past.

Prefered location: Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompéia completed in 1980. On the second day we will have another walk, men are allowed again – philosophers, architects, mayors. They will lead our way into a psychogeographic reading of this city’s future past.

See also: João Batista Vilanova Artigas’ University building.

2081, What Happened? The São Paulo Congress
is generously supported by the Goethe Institute São Paulo