Curator’s manifesto

Vai passar
Nessa avenida um samba popular
Cada paralelepípedo
Da velha cidade
Essa noite vai
Se arrepiar
[A popular samba
Will pass by this avenue
Every cobblestone
Of this ancient city
Will shudder tonight] 
– Chico Buarque e Francis Hime (1984)

Once a year, and only once, (why only once?), we let Carnival pass by the avenue. The avenue in the lyrics is symbolic, because the catharsis goes through alleys, squares, narrow streets, houses, cities, corners, and one can find, in costumes, happy, bathing in the inebriation of fantasy, all kinds of people, who, lulled by a fleeting and breathless joy, indulge in simulating the evolution of freedom. The poet would say that this is the good living, strolling before the banner of the general sanatorium—which will pass.
One day, people were finally entitled to a parcel of joy.
Nise da Silveira might also have wished to subvert the idea of yearly Carnival. Perhaps she wanted us to live Carnival each and every day. And she perhaps thought that we did have another option after all. And if we wanted, could, should, needed… we might, as a method, freely express affects throughout our own avenue—life—, which is existence and coexistence. We might introduce a new way of passing by each cobblestone, remembering our once bleeding feet, our ancestors, the bitter passages, but moving towards an encounter nurtured by the affects and by the revolution initiated with a way of seeing life that has as its premise the beauty of individuality and its collective condition. 
I feel, therefore I perceive the other. Only then it will pass. It will pass.

Liberdade, liberdade!
Abra as asas sobre nós
E que a voz da igualdade
Seja sempre a nossa voz.
[Freedom, freedom!
Spread your wings over us
And may the voice of equality
Always be our voice.]
– Niltinho Tristeza, Preto Jóia, Vicentinho e Jurandir (1989)