Between the body, the staircase, and the gesture:

Distributions of the sensible in the media-city

Abstract

This article examines how the city operates as a sensitive medium and a field of symbolic disputes, focusing on the Escadaria da Vila Madalena in São Paulo, also known as the Cristiano Viana Street or Arco staircase. In this space, the image of Marielle Franco—a Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman assassinated in 2018—has become a site of memory and resistance, subjected to repeated acts of erasure. Drawing on Hans Belting, Jacques Rancière, and Milton Santos, the article discusses how urban spaces actively participate in the constitution, circulation, and silencing of images. Urban art is analyzed as an aesthetic and political practice that acts on regimes of visibility, reconfiguring forms of access and participation in shared space. In this context, the staircase emerges as a palimpsest and a sensitive arena where different narratives dispute permanence and modes of appearance in the public sphere.