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I have written ad nauseam (my nausea, anyway) about the many millennia in which cultures have borrowed (Gerardo Mosquera would say "stolen") architectural and artistic styles from one another out of boredom with the same old thing or out of love of the imagined virtues of the alien culture (what the Romans and the Renaissance made out of Ægypt, for example).
Globalization is a newer phenomenon, though not that new, either, at least a hundred fifty years in the making...nevertheless, colonial architectures seldom replicate the metropole without remainder. The landscaping, if not the architecture, around the government buildings in Suva reminded me many years ago that I was in Fiji and not England, and I suspect that Leptis Magna back in the day had visual clues that reminded Romans that they were in Libya instead of on the far side of Mare Nostrum.
In general, I have found that Pico Iyer's model of Noplaceness as he described it in The Global Soul is found more in hotels and airports and brand-new transit systems than in the embedded infrastructure even of closely related cultures; in Amsterdam and Berlin and Paris and Brussels, I have had moments in which my attempt to pay for transportation or use other instruments of daily commerce have involved the moments of bewilderment that Ludwig Wittgenstein said were the defining characteristic of a philosophical problem: "I don't know my way about."
Imagine my surprise, then, on arriving for the São Paulo launch of our Atlanta Art Now book Noplaceness: Art in a Post-Urban Landscape, to find the landscape of the megacity so thoroughly familiar. Bearing in mind that the favelas are two hours' drive (as the traffic-slowed car crawls) from the districts stretching from Centro to the Universidade de São Paulo or the new financial district along the river, it was disconcerting to be taken on driving tours in which everything without exception looked like Miami, St. Petersburg, or Atlanta, or to find so many cafes for office workers or restaurants for middle-class relaxation in which every menu item was familiar except for one or two alcoholic beverages.
In part this is because of the new globalization; the cultures that contributed to Brazilian cuisine have latterly impacted cities across the US American South, so that, as I said, "It would be silly to come all the way to São Paulo to order the same cappuccino or the same caprese I order in Atlanta." (One big difference: I am told São Paulo has only one Thai restaurant.)
Miami architects and landscapers in particular looked to Brazil for inspiration back in the 1920s and 1930s, so it should come as no surprise that the streetscapes look so much alike. It is a bit more surprising to find the coffee stands and tire repair shops so architecturally familiar, right down to the style of graffiti covering every inch of wall space. Even the social types on the street were recognizable; it felt surreal to see homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks next to shabbily dressed intellectuals sitting with serious books, just as though I were back in Little Five Points in Atlanta. (For all I know, the intellectuals were also one small step away from homelessness, just like back in the US of A.)
Nevertheless, I am aware of the immense differences between US and Brazilian history, so that it is as though the same stage sets were being used to enact different dramas. And of course life and architecture are completely different once you leave the central districts of a megacity in which the climate resembles that of Sydney, Australia. An invigorating frontal system of cool dry air blew into São Paulo on the first night of autumn as we stood in a community of townhouses that...well, that invitation to view a commissioned site-specific multimedia installation is another, digressive story, better saved for one of the art websites.)
Franz Pascher's photos of the book launch (Franz is the partner of Marcia Vaitsman, the descendant of São Paulo's Japanese immigration who translated the English text of Noplaceness into Brazilian Portuguese) are filled with social clues, but not the ones we expected. I knew that Brazil's multiethnic heritage is not that of the Hispanic countries but I hadn't expected to find myself in a room in which it was difficult to discern nationalities from clothing choices and body postures alone. I usually assume you can spot the gringoes (as I am assured we Anglo types are affectionately called in Brazil) from a mile away. (Or a kilometer.)
Of course, a visit to the current articles on http://www.gringoes.com.br/ is a reminder that the environment of a university and the hotel paid for by Atlanta Art Now is not that of the whole of Brazil or even of the whole of São Paulo. (In like fashion, one friend living in London reminded me about the punch line of the old joke in which the Devil tells a new resident who made his choice after previous visits, "What you saw those times before was the Hell we show to the tourists. Now you live here.")
Anyway, I'm pondering anew the different modes of trans-cultural adaptations and adoptions of cultural styles; I must say that it was gratifying, in the vicinity of Avenida Paulista, to find only one Starbucks Coffee after becoming accustomed to European cities in which they appear on every street corner. (I'm not opposed to Starbucks, since I patronize the ones on Decatur Square and in Little Five Points frequently enough; it's their ubiquity in cities that already had ample numbers of coffee-dispensing establishments to which I object.)
Globalization is a newer phenomenon, though not that new, either, at least a hundred fifty years in the making...nevertheless, colonial architectures seldom replicate the metropole without remainder. The landscaping, if not the architecture, around the government buildings in Suva reminded me many years ago that I was in Fiji and not England, and I suspect that Leptis Magna back in the day had visual clues that reminded Romans that they were in Libya instead of on the far side of Mare Nostrum.
In general, I have found that Pico Iyer's model of Noplaceness as he described it in The Global Soul is found more in hotels and airports and brand-new transit systems than in the embedded infrastructure even of closely related cultures; in Amsterdam and Berlin and Paris and Brussels, I have had moments in which my attempt to pay for transportation or use other instruments of daily commerce have involved the moments of bewilderment that Ludwig Wittgenstein said were the defining characteristic of a philosophical problem: "I don't know my way about."
Imagine my surprise, then, on arriving for the São Paulo launch of our Atlanta Art Now book Noplaceness: Art in a Post-Urban Landscape, to find the landscape of the megacity so thoroughly familiar. Bearing in mind that the favelas are two hours' drive (as the traffic-slowed car crawls) from the districts stretching from Centro to the Universidade de São Paulo or the new financial district along the river, it was disconcerting to be taken on driving tours in which everything without exception looked like Miami, St. Petersburg, or Atlanta, or to find so many cafes for office workers or restaurants for middle-class relaxation in which every menu item was familiar except for one or two alcoholic beverages.
In part this is because of the new globalization; the cultures that contributed to Brazilian cuisine have latterly impacted cities across the US American South, so that, as I said, "It would be silly to come all the way to São Paulo to order the same cappuccino or the same caprese I order in Atlanta." (One big difference: I am told São Paulo has only one Thai restaurant.)
Miami architects and landscapers in particular looked to Brazil for inspiration back in the 1920s and 1930s, so it should come as no surprise that the streetscapes look so much alike. It is a bit more surprising to find the coffee stands and tire repair shops so architecturally familiar, right down to the style of graffiti covering every inch of wall space. Even the social types on the street were recognizable; it felt surreal to see homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks next to shabbily dressed intellectuals sitting with serious books, just as though I were back in Little Five Points in Atlanta. (For all I know, the intellectuals were also one small step away from homelessness, just like back in the US of A.)
Nevertheless, I am aware of the immense differences between US and Brazilian history, so that it is as though the same stage sets were being used to enact different dramas. And of course life and architecture are completely different once you leave the central districts of a megacity in which the climate resembles that of Sydney, Australia. An invigorating frontal system of cool dry air blew into São Paulo on the first night of autumn as we stood in a community of townhouses that...well, that invitation to view a commissioned site-specific multimedia installation is another, digressive story, better saved for one of the art websites.)
Franz Pascher's photos of the book launch (Franz is the partner of Marcia Vaitsman, the descendant of São Paulo's Japanese immigration who translated the English text of Noplaceness into Brazilian Portuguese) are filled with social clues, but not the ones we expected. I knew that Brazil's multiethnic heritage is not that of the Hispanic countries but I hadn't expected to find myself in a room in which it was difficult to discern nationalities from clothing choices and body postures alone. I usually assume you can spot the gringoes (as I am assured we Anglo types are affectionately called in Brazil) from a mile away. (Or a kilometer.)
Of course, a visit to the current articles on http://www.gringoes.com.br/ is a reminder that the environment of a university and the hotel paid for by Atlanta Art Now is not that of the whole of Brazil or even of the whole of São Paulo. (In like fashion, one friend living in London reminded me about the punch line of the old joke in which the Devil tells a new resident who made his choice after previous visits, "What you saw those times before was the Hell we show to the tourists. Now you live here.")
Anyway, I'm pondering anew the different modes of trans-cultural adaptations and adoptions of cultural styles; I must say that it was gratifying, in the vicinity of Avenida Paulista, to find only one Starbucks Coffee after becoming accustomed to European cities in which they appear on every street corner. (I'm not opposed to Starbucks, since I patronize the ones on Decatur Square and in Little Five Points frequently enough; it's their ubiquity in cities that already had ample numbers of coffee-dispensing establishments to which I object.)
