The City as Interface – Memory, Affections and Heritage

The City as Interface was a conversation with Giovanna Casemiro, a Brazilian artist with a Master degree in Visual Arts at the Postgraduate Program in Visual Arts (

PPGART / UFSM). Presently, Giovanna is a PhD student at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo.  She coordinated the  Research 
Laboratory in Interactive Environments (LPAI) and lectured Digital Design at the University Center – SENAC. Her research focus on the use of mixed augmented reality. 
During the event Giovanna discussed different projects of public art that she has participated during the last two years focusing on civic action, social engagement and collective memory in digital culture. The projects presented included Interaffective Swings (Sao Paulo – 2016), Crossed Lines (Sao Paulo – 2017), Look Again (Boston – 2017), and Arlines of the City (Boston – 2018). Her presentation at this event can be found here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MQphJhGtexDks7ZLAD-QS-wwmK-EViba/view?usp=sharing
Some of her projects include a series of interventions utilizing augmented reality such as the project at the Old Corner Bookstore, at Illuminus Festival – Look Again (Boston, 2017); an installation at WELT KOMPAKT? exhibition – ARLines of The City (Vienna, 2017); and interactive murals Beyond the Walls (Boston, 2017). For more info and complete portfolio visit the site: www.ggcasimiro.com
Giovanna is presently working with Alvaro Lima in the project I_Migration that is being sponsored by Digaai. The project is an experimental video art installation meant to provoke thought and discussion about illegality, identity and belonging with regard to immigration. The project uses videos and images from Digaai archive and other collections as well as content posted on Instagram with the hashtags #immigrant and #immigration.
I_Migration interrogates the dual presence of undocumented immigrants in the United States. They are physically present and deeply embedded in communities, the economy and the cultural fabric of society; and yet also “illegal,” present by virtue of a spatial transgression, and thus incompatible with the legal framework that governs that society. In this context, undocumented immigrants appear as “glitches” in a system that attempts to define presence, and perhaps even belonging, as a matter of law. This de jure presence is always interlocked with its foil, the de facto presence of immigrants as members of society. At once accepted and rejected, undocumented immigrants thus represent a kind of systematic error, the societal failure to reconcile the legal and moral-ethical horizons that together define who is or isn’t “here.”  
[wonderplugin_gridgallery id=22]