Place It!

The series of photographs "Place It!" shows Praça dos Três Poderes (Square of the Three Powers) at the center of Brasilia, which for Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber represents an exemplary combination of architectural and political order in modernism. While the square with its cool aesthetics remains empty in a formal sense, it is animated by the fleeting and temporary settlement of people selling beverages and souvenirs. This subtle resistance is held in check by repeated clearing of the square according to modern mechanisms of order and discipline. As part of the project "Live Like This!" the artists are concerned in "Place It!" with the appropriation and re-territorialization of public space, the constitution of sociocultural space, as well as the visual practices and systems of representation that produce our conception of these spaces.