Norte Comum: arte, cultura e política em movimento na cidade do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This work aims to accompany the “Norte Comum” cultural network, which operates in Rio de Janeiro’s north zone, as well as the creation of the sense in motion of what – through the group’s perspective – can be understood as art, culture, city, and politics. During the period researched (2014-2017), major sporting events were held in Rio de Janeiro; these, in turn, had major impacts on socioeconomic life of the city and its residents, and led to disturbing political transformations in the Brazilian federal government. In this context, the work seeks to understand the possibilities and limitations of the existence of a cultural collective that aims to reestablish means of circulation and cultural expression within the neighborhoods of a poor region of the city. The analysis of the collective’s discourses and their practices of making a city unfolds by means of analyzing their mode of acting in public space, through dialogue with public cultural policies, as well as the reconstruction of urban identities and belongings, modes of contemporary urban political activism and the challenges of building the common.