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Carnaval Pluriel (Plural Carnival) is the title of the book to be published by Editions MF, in Paris, in December 2021. The project, conceived by editor Bastien Gallet, features contributions from authors from Brazil and France, as well as artists from both countries, and also from Argentina, Peru, and Ecuador. A Portuguese edition will be released in Brazil in 2022.

Primeira boneca do livro, por Jauneau Vallance
First draft of the book, by Jauneau Vallance.
Primeira boneca do livro, por Jauneau Vallance
First draft of the book, by Jauneau Vallance.
Primeira boneca do livro, por Jauneau Vallance
First draft of the book, by Jauneau Vallance.

Book-Block, Party Machine

Take the thought to dance. Throw phrases like streamers. Flutter images, stories, verses, drawings, and daydreams like banners that carry and translate the experience of street Carnival in Rio de Janeiro onto the pages of a book. A space that promotes the meeting of bodies, in a ball of ideas, stories, and images. A book-block, a dirty block, the most libertarian and anarchic genre of Carnival block, directly descended from the most ancestral of carnivals, the Dionysian festivals.

This publication arises from the desire to reflect on the Carnival experience from the perspective of the emergence of a specific block at the 2019 Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Panamérica Transatlântica was conceived in Paris, gestated for several years within the core of La Centrale 22 by Dado Amaral, Viviana Méndez, Pablo Schalscha, and other people connected to the transatlantic networks of this collective. Artists and activists from France, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Portugal, Italy, and other nations make up this immaterial fabric, this living network. All these people made the project of a plurinational Carnival block, the materialization of the encounter of people from different origins, slowly germinate year after year, until it blossomed at Carnival 19.

Among the members who joined the adventure of going to Brazil to bring the block to the streets was Bastien Gallet, coordinator of Éditions MF and collaborator of La Centrale 22. Bastien went, saw, and returned impressed by the strength of Rio de Janeiro’s street Carnival. The poem Le bloc avance, an admirable synthesis of the experience of participating in a street block, is the result of his experiences at Carnival in Rio. It was Bastien Gallet’s original idea to produce this book, a collective essay, an experience of reflection, investigation, and creation around the experience of Carnival and its poetic, political, historical, and social potentials.

The initial criterion was to invite artists and intellectuals who participated in the first parade of the block in March 2019 to collaborate with the book, either with poetic, fictional, or theoretical texts, or with visual works related to the Carnival universe. With the maturation of the project, the design became more ambitious, and it began to include contributions from important contemporary thinkers of Brazilian culture, such as historian Luiz Antônio Simas and musician/musicologist Luís Filipe de Lima, who produced texts especially for this edition. Renowned contemporary artists such as Ernesto Neto, Jarbas Lopes, and Cabelo also joined the project and sent original creations. Franck Leibovici, who participated in the rehearsals and the block’s outing in Paris (at the Fête de la Musique of 2019), created a piece specifically for the book.

Then came the year 2020, and with it the global pandemic. Carnival happened, Panamérica Transatlântica went out, and soon after, Rio de Janeiro shut down. During this time, the scope of the book expanded even further. We included historical texts from central writers in Brazilian culture such as Mário de Andrade, perhaps the most important intellectual in the study and understanding of the country’s popular culture. Texts by him and by Machado de Assis, José de Alencar, Lima Barreto, João do Rio, Manuel Bandeira, Oswald de Andrade, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade bring other historical and literary perspectives on the phenomenon of Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival.

The dialogue with the visual arts, constitutive of La Centrale 22 and deeply rooted in the tradition of Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival, began here from the genesis of the block, which has two Chilean artists at its core. Hélio Oiticica, a central figure in Brazilian art, was chosen as one of the patrons of the block and as an aesthetic reference for Panamérica Transatlântica. Oiticica made the transition from abstract, cerebral art to the search for what he called supra-sensory, proposing creation through the bodily act and the “experimental exercise of freedom.” The artist’s relationship with the Mangueira community, his traditional samba school, and the universe of Carnival was decisive and definitively altered the course of his work and thought.

The aesthetic urgency of Panamérica Transatlântica’s propositions mirrors its political urgency, as Brazil elected an extreme-right government in 2018, bringing the military and moral crusades back to politics. Thus, organizing a Carnival block, rehearsing, and parading through the streets of the city is primarily a way to promote encounters, meetings, discussions, and collective creation. This book is also the result of this association, of this network created around the idea of a stateless Carnival block, or a floating continent, just like Saramago’s stone raft.

Panamérica Transatlântica was born with its heart in Afro-Brazilian culture, its head in the fight against social inequality, in the integration of the cultures that form Brazil, and in the intolerance of fascism and violent ignorance that plague the country, from which, unfortunately, no one is still free.

We hope that the “party machine” of this book-block, its crossed looks, the dance of its ideas and images can bring new visions of Brazil’s Carnival, stripped of prejudices and folklorization, as well as new understandings of its political potential, its power of resistance, and its civilizational proposal.

Dado Amaral
(introduction to the book)