Perdiz’s Garage-Theatre: memory with no place

Abstract

The following text is an essay on the relations between urban space and memory. It approaches the particular case of Brasilia based Perdiz’s Garage-Theatre under the field of cultural heritage preservation since the place has been the spot of an intense game of interests among artists, producers, governmental offices in charge of Heritage (IPHAN, Secretary of Culture of the Federal District and Public Ministery) and real-estate industry. We apply the notion of cultural goods developed by Emeritus Professor of Faculty of Philosophy and Human Sciences of the University of S~o Paulo, Ulpiano Meneses in order to analysis Perdiz’s GarageTheatre case and the multiple dimensions of that space. Those dimensions are given by Meneses’ categories of artifact, field of forces and social representations which approach the concept of city itself. Finally, following the ideas of Andreas Huyssen, Flávia Brito do Nascimento and José Reginaldo Santos Gonçalves we seek to demonstrate how ineffective the measures taken to solve the case were since they do not retain the primary attributes that would qualify that space as a cultural good. On the contrary, it came out to create a space with no memory and memory with no place.