Time, technique and memory

the old Antarctica factory and the temporalities of industrial São Paulo

Abstract

This article analyzes the former factory complex of the Companhia Antarctica Paulista, located in Mooca, as a unique empirical object for understanding the multiple temporalities of industrial São Paulo, manifested in the modern city we have inherited in contemporary times. The text argues that the formation and consolidation of this factory space expresses the technical and economic acceleration that dictated the new urban rhythms and orchestrated the social practices of life and work for over a century. In the present, the former factory, considered heritage at the very moment of its abandonment, reveals itself not as an inert residue of the past, but as a field of forces  fundamental to understanding the relationships between time and space in industrial São Paulo. The Antarctica factory is analyzed through the relationships between time, technique, and memory that imply, at each moment, temporalities that juxtapose and overlap, and are expressed, materially and symbolically, as marks of transformations that constitute multiple historicities.