International audienceThis urban ethnography study deals with understanding how different actors take possession of the beach as a field of possibilities, through the planning of future mega-events (such as the Football World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Summer Games in 2016). Artists that one can meet on the beach negotiate their stands location and try to acquire legitimacy on this world-famous space of Copacabana beach. While carefully including the sensory dimension of trade practices in the economy of the beach, this paper will above all be focused on the political nature of the sensitive. It will deal with the logics begetting the political sense that invests these cultural activities, thus establishing one of the possible significance of pieces, speeches, practices, by definition unfolded