Petit Festival de Janeiro is a site specific arts and music festival set in a high class neighbourhood in Campinas, interior of São Paulo state. Despite the fact that Brazilian law establishes the right to seize public spaces for cultural manifestations, interventions and other activities of collective interest, access to public spaces and the cultural infrastructure is conditioned by economic inequality and spatial segregation. Most high class areas operate under a privatist logic of public space, where the open and free access infrastructure is seen as a possibility of getting in contact with the unknown other.
The high season of a tropical country usually calls attention towards beaches and coastal areas, but not everyone has the condition to travel. As a consequence of the public policy on culture, the interior of the country is left with very few options for leisure and entertainment. Petit Festival de Janeiro occupies this gap during the month of January through the collaboration of around 80 people from the city and abroad for public independent music and visual arts.
This gap in access to culture creates a certain disturbance in the realization of an independent festival in a high class area. The bureaucratization of municipal administration have reached a complex level where decisions made at certain instances are not centralized by the mayor and high-level administrative personnel. The project was approved by the secretary of culture but only discovered a few days before its realization by the the vice-mayor, which curiously lived near the square. The project contributed for a state against state wrist fight to decide whether the festival could happen or not.
The high season of a tropical country usually calls attention towards beaches and coastal areas, but not everyone has the condition to travel. As a consequence of the public policy on culture, the interior of the country is left with very few options for leisure and entertainment. Petit Festival de Janeiro occupies this gap during the month of January through the collaboration of around 80 people from the city and abroad for public independent music and visual arts.
This gap in access to culture creates a certain disturbance in the realization of an independent festival in a high class area. The bureaucratization of municipal administration have reached a complex level where decisions made at certain instances are not centralized by the mayor and high-level administrative personnel. The project was approved by the secretary of culture but only discovered a few days before its realization by the the vice-mayor, which curiously lived near the square. The project contributed for a state against state wrist fight to decide whether the festival could happen or not.
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