Embaralhando a profusão feiras livres em Alagoas a partir de gestos e imagens

Abstract

This thesis emerged from the concern about how the challenges raised by street markets impact on the ideas, training and ultimately the way architects and urbanists deal with them. Access to these markets, in effect, took place during a significant cultural investigation entitled "The Project for Safeguarding the Intangible Heritage in Alagoas", which was held in all the municipalities of the State and was sponsored by Iphan [National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute]. It was regarded as a feasible proposition that these busy commercial spaces with their wealth of cultural exchanges could be understood in terms of gestures captured in images. As a means of paving the way for this better understanding, a collection of more than 2,800 photographs of 37 street markets in 35 cities and towns in the State was available, together with a dossier of even more images related to the patterns of everyday life, which are closely linked to this spatiality and were gathered during the Safeguarding Project and on personal trips. To start with, a methodological decision was made to mix up the photographs to give autonomy to a realm of visibility removed from previous information about any specific street market such as, for example, its history or geographical location. In addition, at this stage data about the preparation of the images, such as their author or date, were ignored. After striking the first blow with the photographs, visual narratives were created on the basis of what could be seen in the records. During these exercises, intuition, memory and imagination were all set in motion in an attempt to strategically organize the sheer abundance. This was mainly carried out against the backdrop of the interpretations of Didi-Huberman (2015), (2017b), (2018) and their valuable reflections on images and methodologies such as the montages and mnemosyne atlas of the German art historian, Warburg. In these visual narratives, not only gestures of being and acting in space have been mapped, but also methods of acquiring knowledge, both artistic and academic. In taking these measures, identified as cartographies, two factors were investigated: the fragmented nature of the street markets and their scarcity. Finally, in responding to the initial concerns expressed at the beginning of this thesis (which were questions about the official ways of processing experiences related to documenting cultural assets that can be found in the field and the role of the architect in this process), in the last task this movement was summarized, together with the construction of new images and three cartographies: of absences, of the "undesired" and of uncertainties.