Felipe Casanova

Loveboard speaks to an era in which relationships are increasingly preserved through digital archives and the large amount of digital detritus this generates. Our personal troves of images have grown significantly in recent decades. The availability and cost of film stock constrained people to choose what to archive, and therefore, to also curate the image of their past. In this sense, digital media is counterintuitive, even antithetical to curatorship: it has the ability to seemingly conserve everything, including moments that seem utterly inconsequential, even banal, that are valued only in retrospect (if at all).

From afar, Rio’s Carnival often seems the quintessential expression of everything Brazilian. The intense and relentless rhythms incite a trance-like celebration, where song and dance amplify the joyful aura to its utmost hypnotising. The foreign onlooker gawks at the carnival because of its enthralling release from the usual reign of restraint and rationality. To them, it plays as a sensorial reverie whose exuberant exterior embodies the “exotic”, but beyond the initial flash and pan, there’s a communal force deeply ingrained in the event.