excerpt of a talk at Spielart Wake-up festival, Munchen, November 2013 by Ana Bigotte Vieira
Desbarato, an urban intervention collectively started by Ana Bigotte Vieira, Sandra Lang, graphic designer Marco Balesteros (all of us as part of the editorial and performative project Jeux Sans Frontières at Lisbon Trienal of Architecture/ SOund Development City Summer 2013 Expedition) and graphic designer Isabel Lucena, together with a series of other people such as António Guterres (Urban Transitions/StressFm), Patrícia Almeida and David Guéniot from Ghost editorial collective, Fernanda Eugénio (And_Lab), Sofia Neuparth (cem-centro em movmento) and Silvia Pinto Coelho (salganhada /Rossio acampada Arts and Culture Group), among other collaborators/accomplices.


Corpus Christi quarter at Rua dos Fanqueiros, Lisboa
Conceived as a collective research-action, Desbarato aims at investigating and calling attention to the processes of gentrification Lisbon has been going through in the last couple of years – especially since Troika´s intervention. As it is well known, real estate speculation was at the very core of this crisis and, at least in the Portuguese case (the so called “troika good student”), one of austerity’s outputs was to enable the massive transference of real estate and infrastructures to foreign global capital (such as banks and investment funds). Outstanding austerity’s student, Portugal is selling out public services almost for anything through privatizations and privates who have lost their jobs, cannot afford taxes or need urgent money are selling out private goods (often real estate) for very low prices. Actually, major alterations to real estate legislation were part of Troika’s first memorandum. Read More