Brasília’s Cultural Events Take to the Street

Brasília's contemporary cultural production gives extreme importance to occupying public space to assert one's right to the city. The trend crosses class, race, gender, and sexuality lines and is particularly notable since 2012. Cultural street events—an umbrella term for free art and leisure events (block parties, art festivals, rap battles, slam poetry events, LGBTIQ+ pride festivals, etc.) in streets, public squares, and parks—are increasingly common. In a car-centered city known for private socializing, this intentional turn toward public space is striking. Cultural street events share a conviction that in producing and consuming culture collectively in public they are improving Brasília, yet they all conceive of that improvement differently. The article first explores the right to the city (Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and Don Mitchell) in relation to cultural street events. Then, it provides a historical overview of Brasília to argue that part of the impetus behind the rise of cultural street events as manifestations of the right to the city is the urgency felt around redressing a history of uneven access to public space and to cultural production. Finally, the article engages how specific cultural street events use public space to affirm underrepresented residents' right to the city.