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Apresentação Orquestra e Escola de Samba

The project “CARNEVALMA” by Laura Cionci is spreading the message of the importance of the carnival mask -a mask that unmasks and declares, culturally used in the Uruguayan and Argentinian carnival, but has European roots- in expressing the needs of a community.

Like in Metropoliz the inhabitants were expressing their desire for a space, through the murga mask, the same way the community of Sao Francisco is sending a message of union, expressing a specific need of the local people. The performance aims at representing what will be fully expressed the next day through the public walk: the claim for an hospital.

Project CARNEVALMA: Laura Cionci

Tecnical Support: Azzurra Muzzonigro

Photos by: Daniele Zacchi

The walk crossed the different parts that compose the territory of São Francisco, from the occupations to the Promorar, from the Mutirao to the new predios and became the occasion to create attention among the population around the claim for health in a creative, ludic manner.

It ended in an area that the population had pointed out as a possible lot where to build the hospital. In that place ‘The First Cure’ a rite of traditional medicine took place, everybody stood in a circle and drank a homemade herbal remedy in coconut shells prepared by local inhabitants together with LAC. The ritual symbolized the first cure and stood as a site of hope for future transformation.

photos by: Daniele Zacchi

The spatial device to spread the call for an hospital in Sao Francisco would be for all the participants to wear a shirt with a red heart symbolizing health. The LAC team therefore organized a workshop involving the community, particularly women and children, to creatively paint 250 shirts with red hearts to be distributed to the people participating to the Jornada.

photos by: Daniele Zacchi

We met with the leader of São Francisco to share their story and their struggles and pull out some issues that are important to them.

The discussion was organised by subjects in relation to its relevance  to the main question investigated: the strength of the community and the transformation of space.

We asked the community to seek their own issues that are central to their collective strengthening and how this translates into spatial transformations.

Everyone’s opinion is unanimous that the current most important and most urgent struggle is the need for a hospital around São Francisco.

photos by: Daniele Zacchi