The present thesis discusses the subject of cultural occupations based on a reflection regarding the experience of the Spa Hotel of Madness, which consisted in the occupation of a psychiatric hospital located in the Municipal Institute Nise da Silveira between the years of 2012 and 2016. The research considers occupations as the strategies of production and re-signification of spaces through collective presence and meaningful practices, that is, practices that focus on the uses and the symbolic relationship of spaces with life forms. The occupation of the Spa Hotel of Madness, attended by cultural collectives, artists, researchers, professionals and users of the mental health network, figures as an interesting case of spatial practices as it transformed two floors of a functioning psychiatric hospital in a space of artistic and cultural production that embraces a wide network of social actors. By mobilizing issues related to the field of social movements, especially the Anti Mental Health Institution s Movement, and processes related to the field of arts and cultural production, occupation is a field of analysis that reveals the intersections between culture and politics in contemporary forms of collective action. The hypothesis discussed here is that an intense approximation is taking place between the political and symbolic production spheres, marked by both the politicization of art and the interplay between political action and cultural performance. In the context of biopower, this process is related to the ways in which the political dispute became inseparable from what Arjun Appadurai calls the work of the imagination. The question of cultural occupations, discussed here in the light of the concept of heterotopia developed by authors such as Foucault and Hetherington, points to a new consideration of the dimension of space as the axis of agency and the construction of other life forms.