ARCHITECTURAL ECHOTONES. A Poetics Of The Surrounds

Architectural Echotones. A Poetics Of The Surrounds is a project conceived by SAVVY Contemporary in the framework of the 36th São Paulo Biennale's travelling exhibition in Berlin and invites the Brazilian collective Vilanismo to take over the Wedding art space. Conceived as a parallel presentation of the biennial, this project joins a chorus of voices, engaging with diverse audiences across Berlin, and provides a platform to reflect further on a central question posed by the biennial, notably, how can we rethink humanity as a verb and as a living practice that can renegotiate and dismantle prevailing asymmetries? Taking this cue as a departure point, Architectural Echotones invites the collective Vilanismo, which took part in the São Paulo iteration, to present their works for the first time in Berlin. Founded in 2021 in São Paulo, Vilanismo, a brotherhood composed of ten Black artists all inhabiting several peripheries of the city, emerged not only as an artistic collective but also as a counter-movement. One that seeks, in a climate of exclusion and abusive extraction, to challenge historical stereotypes imposed on black bodies, and create spaces of resistance and gathering rooted within Afro-indigenous knowledge systems. Leaning into SAVVY Contemporary's subtitle as a Laboratory of Form-Ideas and both institutions' shared interests around spatial strategies, the project is conceived not as a mere exhibition that displays (art)works as finished products, but rather as a laboratory that invites Vilanismo to take over the Berlin premises and inhabit it as a site of experimentation, and as a site subject to transformation, formed to the measure of the people. As a result, our Wedding artspace becomes a living space, a working studio, a gallery, … an echo chamber that pulsates to the rhythm of Vilanismo's social, political, and artistic practices back home in São Paulo, such that the audience, upon entering the space in Berlin, finds themself immersed in a resonant gesture echoing between both cities. THE SURROUNDS The notion of echoing, or being in relation, forms a core pillar of Architectural Echotones. Approached from an urbanistic point of view, both Vilanismo – which primarily operates from the outskirts – and SAVVY Contemporary in Wedding – a peripheral neighbourhood – share commonalities based on their geographical locations in São Paulo and Berlin, respectively. Be it in the peripheries, Banlieus, Barrio marginal, or Favelas, as called in other countries, the populations inhabiting these large settlements, often created during Post-war Europe and in more recent times, in certain parts of the Global South, as a means to resolve the alarming housing crisis or demographic booms, have increasingly suffered from stigmatization in various societies. The slow infiltration of new terms such as Brennpunktviertel in Germany or Achterstandswijk in the Netherlands has further consolidated these stigmas within public opinion, such that upward social mobility for the inhabitants of these neighbourhoods often sounds unimaginable. SAVVY Contemporary, in conversation with Vilanismo, strives for this shared peripheral and situated perspective by reclaiming the "margins" as political centres. We acknowledge the fact that our commonalities find roots in the words of the philosopher and urbanist AbdouMaliq Simone, who argues in his book The Surrounds: Urban Life within and beyond Capture, that the peripheries (or Surrounds as he terms them) are urban spaces beyond control and capture that exist as a locus of rebellion and invention. As such, we draw parallels between the past and the present, the working-class resistance from the then Roter Wedding, and the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto in São Paulo, and pose the fundamental question: what does it mean to inhabit and make cultural work from the Surrounds? EXHIBITION AND PUBLIC PROGRAMMING Bringing together a constellation of practices spanning installations, paintings, drawings, video works, and on-site performances, Architectural Echotones calls for collective action and reflection. Aligned with SAVVY's commitment to engage with local audiences – from various age groups, social backgrounds and trajectories – as well as international audiences, the project articulates itself across an exhibition, a public programme that also incorporates the various pillars of SAVVY, such as the library and the radio station, workshops on Vilanismo's curatorial approach called "curadoTRETA", and online interventions.