BODIES IN TRANSIT IN PUBLIC SPACE

TERRITORIES OF (NON) OCCUPATION

Abstract

Urban public space, perceived as a “territory” of possibilities (Sarr, 2022), calls us to understand its dynamics, tensions, and contradictions, in an exercise of critical awareness of silenced narratives and absent and marginalized bodies, reinforced by urban policies that produce socio-spatial segregation. These are bodies that carry stories and “burdens”, that live in transit, marked by systems of domination and oppression, essential to the structuring and preservation of patriarchal, racist, and capitalist society (Vergès, 2023). It is therefore important to question who inhabits public space and to “[p]oliticize bodies as territories to be defended” (Nobre & Moreno, 2020, p.48). Public space thus constitutes, unequivocally, a territory of dispute, in relation to who occupies it, how it is occupied, and at what times. The Porto Local Laboratory sought to map absences and invisibilities in public space and to explore its occupation, through an ongoing practice of resistance – poetic, affective, and political – and to collectively imagine possibilities for change. Observation of workshops, artistic interventions, and collaborative (de)construction processes, and their careful recording, were used to gather experiences to understand their implications for the (non)occupation of public space.