Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to recognize the intertwining of affect and derelict materiality emerged during artistic interventions of abandoned houses in process to be destroyed in Lima during 2008 to 2011. These acts of resistance helped to overcome dramatic changes of the urban face of the city.

Paper long abstract:

After more than a decade of applying a liberal economic program and to put in jail the head of terrorist group Shining Path, Abimael Guzman, Lima´s landscape had changed. There were many abandoned houses in the richest areas as result of people running away from Peru at the 1990s because of the internal war. The economic growth brought new foreign capitals interested in investing in Peru; but, new ways of being alive in Lima, too. The city had to make room for the bars, restaurants, malls, etc. were needed.

All along the city you would find large empty derelict houses showed that although they had been relevant to their owners and those to society, now they had to clear the path for the new inhabitants Lima was welcoming. Urban landscapes are configured by the natural, the historical, the social and the cultural of the scenes and encounters that take place at the city; but the brotherly fraternal bonds, the ideological, the hopes and memories of their inhabitants as well.

Artistic interventions of these houses about to be demolished was a way to resist the new social relations the new building proposed to the city as an urban space and to its inhabitants. There was no space for boys playing football on the streets, nor girls and boys flirting at the corners. Young artist decided to witness from its ruins, at least for some days, the world they were forced to say good bye.