Presentation short abstract

Based on research at Teat(r)o Oficina, São Paulo, the paper tells the story of how more-than human acts by a river, a fallen tree and a marginalized black and queer community in the neighborhood prefigure a socially and environmentally just place-making countering gentrification and urban design.

Presentation long abstract

Taking the point of the departure in the avantgarde and queer theatre, Teat(r)o Oficina in São Paulo, the paper seeks to formulate a queer place making practice that works with marginalised voices, relationalities for social and environmental and social justice in an beyond the city. How can artistic practices, performance and embodiment help voicing minor gestures and marginalized voices, for instance of the black minority and Quilomboque heritage in the neighborhood, and how does these voices intersect with the queer ecologies surrounding Teat(r)o Oficina and their performance practice? To what extent can the queer and minor ecologies of the tree, of performance and the sowing of seeds and gardening inform a place-making practice? Through environmental storytelling where more-than human performances of a tree, the subaltern river underneath the territory, the theatre architecture, and the neighborhood community is enacted, the presentation will show how queer ecologies can prefigure a truly ecological place-making. Queer performance and environmental performance acts is in this sense a counter movement to the placemaking practices carried out by the municipality of São Paulo and the real estate owner of the land. While the subaltern may not be able to speak (Spivak) into the hegemonic discourses of current urban place making, the presentation argues that the subaltern understood as the more-than human ecologies of the river running beneath, marginalized and queer communities may be able to act and embody a socially and environmentally just place-making.