INTERGALACTIC STATION : THE POWER OF BRAZILIAN CARNIVAL RESCUING A CLOSED TRAIN STATION.
Street Carnival, Occupation, Popular Culture, Train Station, Affective Cartography.
The relationship between popular festivals and the city is crucial for the development and
constitution of social, subjective and urban relations. In Brazil, carnival represents a national
rite. Starting from a provocation in the Deluzian way: “what can a carnival block?”; and
understanding this carnival block as a device of popular culture accupying a specific space in
the city; the Chagas Dória Train Station, a disabled train station in the city of São João del-Rei,
MG, was used in that sense. This empty space was a platform for the activities of the block.
Between 2017 and 2020, several workshops, rehearsals and carnival performances were held.
In this process, a block identity was created and transmitted, mainly through traditional
Brazilian musical rhythms, also through the choice of repertoires, instruments, visual identities,
arts and strategies for dissemination through social networks. This process will be narrated and
understood here using the affective cartography´s features, understanding the political nature
of cultural resistance through the occupation of space and the teaching of traditional rhythms.
It was sought to look at non-linear connections, multiplicities and ruptures in this process,
through a rhizomatic bias.