São Paulo - Paris: Forgetfulness and memory traces

Abstract

In Paris in the nineteenth-century, the Passages are like thresholds, doors into which one surpasses the difference in people’s attitude, as if they were about to make a decision. Guarding these thresholds of the Parisian Passages were heavy machines, gambling machines, and mechanical seers - the modern “know thyself” - as if these places corresponded to the Greek oracles. Which gives us the idea that, even though they were coming to the city with an imperious force, the changes were imposed on a past that remained, although veiled by the new forms. In colonized countries like Brazil, the story begins when the colonizers arrive and impose themselves on the territory, which is “new” to them, with a history brought from afar. For those who already inhabit this territory, the past no longer exists. The Bandeirantes contributed to the construction of this history based on violence against the indigenous and the usurpation of their territory.