Access the work in ditamapa.desvirtual.com/en/

Ditamapa

Places of memory of the 1964 dictatorship in Brazil

Ditamapa is a map of streets, avenues, bridges and viaducts named after presidents of the 1964-1985 dictatorship (Humberto Castelo Branco, Artur da Costa e Silva, Emilio Garrastazu Médici, Ernesto Geisel, João Figueiredo…)

Streets are like wrinkles in a city. This, incidentally, is the Latin origin of the word “street” in Portuguese (rua/ruga). Grooved by the passage of time and events, streets function as places of memory. In the particular case of Ditamapa, their names express the presence of the ghosts of authoritarianism and the ways how that presence was naturalized in our present.

Associated with images captured on Google Street View, the points marked on our map allow us to see the debris of the so-called “Brazilian Miracle” and the ruins of our present. These images make up the Postcards of Regression series, the photos captured in the process of searching and formatting Ditamapa. (continue reading)