{"id":38891,"date":"2017-09-25T09:33:13","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T12:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=38891"},"modified":"2017-09-27T10:03:25","modified_gmt":"2017-09-27T13:03:25","slug":"the-struggle-has-just-begun-vila-autodromo-evictions-museum-presents-its-strategic-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=38891","title":{"rendered":"‘The Struggle Has Just Begun’: Vila Aut\u00f3dromo Evictions Museum Presents Its Strategic Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On Tuesday, September 19, a team of museologists and Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a> residents presented the Museological Plan for the Evictions Museum<\/a>, an open-air territorial museum that was created in May 2016 to document both the community\u2019s eviction process and the struggle against it<\/a>. The presentation took place in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo’s Catholic Church, a symbolic site of struggle that was spared from demolition.<\/p>\n

Museologist Joy Mendes explained that a museological plan is \u201ca plan of action, a strategic plan.\u201d Her colleague Alex Rodrigues Venancio described it as an essential tool for defining and organizing the priorities and activities of any museum project.<\/p>\n

The Evictions Museum<\/a>\u2019s Museological Plan has been developed through a collective process<\/a> with input from Vila Aut\u00f3dromo residents and a range of supporters\u2014not only museologists but architects, urbanists, sociologists, and residents of other Rio favelas.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, resident and activist Sandra Maria<\/a> contextualized Vila Aut\u00f3dromo\u2019s struggle against eviction in Rio\u2019s long history of government projects<\/a> to displace the poor. Other communities, she reflected, had experienced “cowardly” evictions that were “barely documented.\u201d In contrast, Vila Aut\u00f3dromo drew unprecedented media coverage as its residents battled to remain on the edge of the Olympic Park<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>However, it was not only journalists documenting the story as it unfolded, but residents themselves. Resident-activist Luiz Cl\u00e1udio da Silva<\/a>, for example, is currently in the process of organizing albums from thousands of photos, official documents, and clippings of materials posted on social media<\/a>, with many photos dating from the years before evictions began. In this sense, the Evictions Museum can be seen as a more strategic and formalized step in a process of documentation and preservation that began long before the museum was officially launched.<\/p>\n

One main objective of the Evictions Museum, Sandra Maria explained, is the preservation of memory<\/a>\u2014”not just of the population evicted from Vila Aut\u00f3dromo, but of all people who have been evicted or threatened by eviction.” A second objective is for the museum \u201cto serve as a tool for the struggle,\u201d because throughout Vila Aut\u00f3dromo residents\u2019 own battle, they saw first-hand evidence that \u201cmemory is the strongest instrument in this resistance struggle.\u201d Sandra Maria read a formal statement written by four residents on the emergence and purpose of the museum, which concludes with the simple statement that grounds the project: \u201cmemory can\u2019t be removed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Museologist Alex Venancio outlined the Museological Plan itself, introducing seven main program areas: archival and documentation, exhibits, education, research, architecture and urbanism, institutional and fundraising organization, and communication.<\/p>\n

In addition to the type of visual materials that Luiz Cl\u00e1udio da Silva is compiling in albums, a key aspect of the Evictions Museum is its \u201cliving\u201d nature\u2014the entire territory of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo itself is part of the \u201cliving archive.\u201d As such, one of the museum\u2019s projects is to use the neighborhood’s 20 houses<\/a> as exhibits and \u201cto tell the story of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo on its walls, through graffiti,\u201d Venancio explained.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The team plans to build links between the “living” and virtual elements of the museum by interviewing residents about their memories of the physical space of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo and archiving videos of these interviews on the Evictions Museum\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a>. These interviews will be crucial to the plans to publish a book on Vila Aut\u00f3dromo, as well as for the goal to engage younger generations in the preservation of this history<\/a> long into the future.<\/p>\n

Another of the museum\u2019s projects, referred to as \u201cgeolocalization online,\u201d aims to reconstruct evicted or threatened communities by documenting and mapping their geospatial elements online. Venancio stated that with Vila Aut\u00f3dromo\u2019s \u201cphysical territory… the road was already built, the houses were destroyed, the Olympic Center was already built, the hotel is there, and it\u2019s unlikely we\u2019ll see the Olympic Center demolished, the hotel demolished, and Vila Aut\u00f3dromo reclaim its physical space.\u201d But virtual space offers a new opportunity, he argued: \u201cWhere something was removed, we will be able to, virtually, put these communities back in that space, not physically but virtually.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Evictions Museum has international ambitions. The museological plan stresses the importance of stimulating research on Vila Aut\u00f3dromo by academics around the world, growing the already considerable number of articles and dissertations on the community. Sandra Maria highlighted the museum\u2019s relevance to global issues of rights<\/a>, territory<\/a>, and inequality<\/a>, stating that Vila Aut\u00f3dromo\u2019s struggles reflect an \u201cinternational question, linked to the question of disputing land, which is the basis of capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, the museum also has an urgent role to play closer to home, where the threat of eviction hangs over both the small community of Horto<\/a> and the large favela of Rio das Pedras<\/a>, among others. \u201cThe struggle has just begun,\u201d stated Maria da Penha<\/a>, another Vila Aut\u00f3dromo resident-activist playing a large role in the museum\u2019s development. \u201cCitizens, especially favela residents,\u201d she continued, \u201chave to have knowledge of the importance of demanding our rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Penha concluded the event by imagining the powerful potential of the Evictions Museum: “My dream is that one day the museum will reach any community facing eviction and say: “Stop! There’s a museum of evictions, you will not evict me.'”<\/p>\n

Read the Evictions Museum’s Museological Plan here<\/a> (in Portuguese), and follow updates from the Evictions Museum on Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Instagram<\/a>, and YouTube<\/a>.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas On Tuesday, September 19, a team of museologists and Vila Aut\u00f3dromo residents presented the Museological Plan for the Evictions Museum, an open-air territorial museum that was created in May 2016 to […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":38955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1293,1736,1288,1290,1333,329,1329],"tags":[2109,258,2032,674,11,188,884,716,5,2542,270,1445,4,21],"writer":[1352],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-38891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-evictionswatch","8":"category-1736","9":"category-highlight","10":"category-civilsociety","11":"category-event-reports","12":"category-solutions","13":"category-by-international-observers","14":"tag-community-museum","15":"tag-community-solution","16":"tag-evictions-museum","17":"tag-memory","18":"tag-forced-evictions","19":"tag-history","20":"tag-horto","21":"tag-museum","22":"tag-olympics","23":"tag-participatory-planning","24":"tag-resistance","25":"tag-rio-das-pedras","26":"tag-vila-autodromo","27":"tag-west-zone","28":"writer-cerianne-robertson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38891"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=38891"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=38891"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=38891"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=38891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}