Corpographia: A Processual Concept of the Urban Body

Abstract

This chapter introduces the interdisciplinary Corpocidade Platform created by the authors in 2007. This project, through the concrete context of public action, simultaneously testbeds and generates our hypothesis of the body-city condition of corpographia. Here we discuss the evolution of the Corpocidade academic-artistic project within which this concept emerged. Corpocidade, a platform of activities around the theme of the deterioration of the public sphere in the cities, led to the notion of urban corpographia as a way of thinking about the co-implication between the body and the city. Corpographia is proposed as a process that can subvert the logic of city-as-spectacle that currently permeates the contemporary urban planning that has emerged from the capitalist system. The first three iterations of Corpocidade, which gave rise to this term, are discussed in this chapter: Corpocidade 1 — Contemporary Urban Spectacularisation (Salvador 27–31 October 2008); Corpocidade 2 — Conflict and Dissent in the Public Space (Alagados, Salvador 27–30 November 2010 and Maré, Rio de Janeiro 20–22 November 2010); Corpocidade 3 — Methodological Experiences of Apprehension of the City (Salvador 23–27 April 2012 and Paris 2013).

Text translated by Cressida Evans, Gretchen Schiller and Sarah Rubidge. Brazilian terms such as Corpographia and Corpotidade have been retained throughout.