Mera Vista Point

Context

wholesale of ideas

The train line separates two sides. The currency has two sides. The world has two sides. How many? But world and currency are round. How many sides have a round thing? Where and when are currency and world sides? The train line - traces a line. It separates. It interrupts. It creates and recreates sides. How many lines have a round thing? How many lines the currency and the world have? How many sides? The train does not stop. The currency does not stop. The world does not stop. The train, the currency and the Brás world, in the middle of its sides. Side by side. The small things move by themselves, the lines. And thus move the sides. Of the currency and the world.

Project

distribution

From the train tracks, walking on its outskirts around Largo da Concordia, we intend to find and register the daily life and work of the peddlers we meet there.

To find, to talk. To register. What do they sell? Why they sell this and not that? How they sell and to who? When? And when it rains? And when they do not sell well or do not sell anything? How do they make? And if it sells a lot? To register their products, their sales and purchase strategies. From where come these products? Who makes them and why? And who purchase, makes what with them? We intend to identify, through the products, about six peddlers and to register their work, their daily life and histories.

In the ambulant fair of Largo da Concordia we will choose products that seem to us difficult to sell and still reappear frequently in the sales points. Kitsch plastic colored products, little things, cheap, ugly, fragile, things that seem useless. We will choose these "things" - perhaps they are in rose color, perhaps they need stack or perhaps they have high skip, perhaps have smell and collateral effect. They will be "things" that look like nothing useful or solid at first sight, but that still repeat themselves in Largo da Concordia baroque landscape of barbies, bambis and hawaiians - proving that these products repeat themselves, reproduce themselves and integrate themselves into the city. We will look for products that can only be found in Largo da Concordia, or perhaps products that can be found in other similar plazas of the city. We will choose six products.

The strategy to choose the starting point in the product and not in the peddler is due to the fact that we are interested in the relation of these objects with these people. In how these objects influence and determine these people live. What are exactly these objects and who are these people? From where they come and why? And how they started to sell those objects or those things. The work we propose is based on this.

To trace a line, as the train, from the product, in the path of its production and distribution. At one side, who produces it, where and why? And how much money is put into motion there? The Intermediary, if exists, the peddler. The path of the product, that "thing", and the money that is put into motion in the life of the people in whose hands it passes. The train, the train line registered in video will materialize the idea of passage. On the other side, the one who purchase the product and takes it home. To where and why? Why that thing now? How much it costs and how many times that person gains this value by month? And in the middle of everything, the peddler, that lives that, probably without knowing why. How does he sell. How does he lives and what he buys. And how much money is left?

We intend to trace a collective portrait, a sketch on the informal economy, on its creative force, its resistance role facing global economy. Who is saved? Who can do what? Once a large part of the population lives of this market and how it becomes related, integrates the city. The mechanism and the movement. The volume and the speed, saw from the product put for sale.

Video

Retail

The video works as visual documentation, open, poetical. We intend to register unexpected images, contradictory, complex, related ones with the others, of the train tracks and its outskirts; of Largo da Concordia and its peddlers; of "the things" for sale in trays and on the sidewalk; of its prices, offers and speculations; of its histories and paths: from where they come and to where they go. And for how much? Between free images, in close up, almost formal-abstraction of sold objects and aerial panoramas of the train lines and Largo da Concordia. And, on the other hand, interviews, dialogues that register, locate the numbers and histories of "the things" presented in the video. The “things" have their own language. The “things" create their own language. The video is its translation.

Installation

displayed merchandise

Of the materials. Of the things. Starting still with "the things" and situations in which they are distributed - in the fair - in Largo da Concordia, we intend to reconstruct a market "atmosphere" in the display area. An installation with canvases of plastics, trays and of course with "the things", directly displayed in great number. With them come their histories, registered, translated in video projections. The installation must recreate the market atmosphere where the videos become secrets and visible commercial mechanisms. The train circulates in the images as the small change circulates hand in hand. The small change aids the world turning. A confusion of alleys and plastic canvas environments, in which we find “things" that recreate the histories saw in four large video projections. A market that visualizes its rites. All market is a labyrinth of possibilities.