This project aims to amplify the frontiers of urban
space and explore new
possibilities of dialogue with the public, inviting people to
experience a photographic eye. For the first phase of this project (May/2005) I chose 18 bus stops of
3 main squares of downtown Curitiba. On these sites the spectators would be
stopped in an appropriate situation to observe the images.
Each polaroid is, basically, a small
piece of yellow paper. It shows in the place of the image a text
that reveals details of the urban space that we go through every day
without, many times, looking properly: "behind you, on the other
side of the street, at the bottom section of the beige building, there
is a silhouette mark of a house that was demolished";
"During the day, the Savings Bank glassblowing windows turn
people inside the office into unfocused (out of focus)
photographs" are some of the sentences that re-discover
hidden urban scenes.
As each time the (in)visible polaroides are taken to a
new city, they have to be re-produced according to this new urban space.
That means, the polaroides made in Curitiba will not "work out" in
Montreal or Paris because the text I write in the polaroid has to be
close of the image that it describes.
Another feature of the
(in)visible polaroides is their ephemeral character. As they are fixed with a
tape that does not injure the surface where they are placed, they
disappear very quickly, becoming really invisible. On the other hand, as
it is shown on page 15 of this presentation, the internet became an
important tool to allow the continuity of the intervention. In other
words, what becomes invisible in the urban space can be visible
through the internet any time the spectator wants to.
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