Press release
Guia do Copan / Copacopan Day,
pablo international magazine and exo experimental org. invite you to the Copacopan Day, a series of events celebrating the launch of the publication Guia do Copan, a special edition for São Paulo S.A.
Friday 06th October, 2006
Copan Building
Av. Ipiranga, 200 República
São Paulo SP Brazil
info@exo.org.br
11 9492 2445
Events of the day
9:30am coffee at Café Floresta**
10:00am Copan building special tour with Sr. Affonso Celso Prazeres (manager)*
12:00pm Tai Chi lesson at the Copan’s Mezannine
18:00pm Sunset on the rooftop of Copan building*
19:00pm Pizza and launch of the Guia do Copan at Pizzaria Copan**
* please confirm assistance via e-mail or phone, limited number of places available
** tours and events in the building are free, participants are only responsible for their own expenses at café and pizza place
Guia do Copan is an investigation by Pablo Léon de la Barra of the Copan Building and its historical documents. The Copan was designed in 1951 by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer as a commission for the Pan-America Hotel and Tourism Company, a joint venture between Brazilian investors and the US-based Intercontinental Hotels Corporation, a subsidiary of Pan-American World Airways. Located in downtown São Paulo, at the intersection of Avenida Ipiranga and Avenida São Luis, the Copan was officially inaugurated in 1966. The 1950s and 1960s comprised an industrial and economic boom in São Paulo, which resonated with a larger ideology of development and progress in the country marked by the construction of Brasília – the new capital of “the country of the future”. Copan was idealized as the “Rockefeller Center of São Paulo”, an urban complex integrating an hotel with apartments, offices and shops. During its construction the project went through several changes and its final configuration is a 32 story building consisting of 1.160 residential apartments (ranging in size between 29m2 - 240m2) divided into 6 blocks, with shops, a cinema on the ground level, a bank and a parking lot. Copan has become one of the most important symbols of the city, “synonymous with the metropolitan scale of São Paulo’s modernity”, signaling a radical change in the modes of living and in the configuration of the landscape. With a diverse population currently estimated at 5.000, Copan is inscribed with the many levels of social and cultural co-habitation in São Paulo. Investigating Copan is an attempt to critically engage with the city’s complex urban and societal issues. exo experimental org. has located its office and artist-in-residency program in the Copan since 2003. Pablo Leon de la Barra took part in the São Paulo S.A. international residency research program.
São Paulo S.A. aesthetic, social and political practices in debate is a medium/long term cultural project initiated in November 2002 that articulates investigations related to the Brazilian social and political context. The project focuses on the debate concerning contemporary aesthetic practices at the crossroad of diverse disciplines and urban experiences. It considers the metropolis of São Paulo and its complexities as the epicenter of reflections, involving theoreticians, artists, as well as social and political agents. São Paulo S.A. is directed by Catherine David and realized by exo in association with various Brazilian and international cultural institutions, comprising seminars, an international residency research program, workshops, work presentations, an archive and a series of folders and publications.
exo experimental org. is a non-profit cultural organization held in São Paulo since 2002 - co-founded and coordinated by Ligia Nobre and Cécile Zoonens. Copan is the site where exo has its office and artist-in-residency program since early 2003.
www.exo.org.br
Pablo León de la Barra's practice provides a social and aesthetic platform for the examination of different and contradictory tensions which give form to the contemporary experience. He has curated exhibitions such as To Be Political it Has to Look Nice, 2003 at Apexart in New York and Glory Hole, 2006 at the Architecture Foundation, London; and participated amongst other exhibitions at Localismos, 2004 Mexico City; Tropical Abstraction, 2005, Stedelijk Museum; BMW- 9th Baltic Triennial, 2005, CAC-Lithuania and ICA-London; Globos Sonda/Trial Balloons, 2006, MUSAC, Spain; Nothing Really Matters When You Wear A Big Moustache, 2006, Locus, Athens. He lives in London, he was born in Mexico City in 1972.
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