Flop’s appearance has changed a lot this year, as it usually does every year.
The backbone of the Literary Festival of the Parties is a constant change of title, which has less to do with nomadism and more to do with the desire to live up to its name. There are many perimeters, and Flop can’t be stuck in just one perimeter. It is the movement party.
If last year the event was held at Circo Foador, one of the cultural assets that receives the most attention in Rio de Janeiro, in 2023 it will be in Morro da Providencia, near the Rua do Livramento where Machado de Assis was born.
This time, it’s set in one of the Northern Territory’s most beloved pop culture hotspots – the Madureira Bridge, usually dominated by Baile Charme full of people eager to dance to black music on Saturdays. It is such a traditional festival that it was declared a heritage site by the municipality in 2013.
The audacity of holding a literary festival under a bridge – through which cars, buses and taxis continued to pass normally throughout the event – should come as no surprise to anyone following the path of Flop, an event not only bold in its organizational decisions but in its venue choices.
Of course, it will be more difficult for readers from central and southern Rio to access the festival debates in the Madureira neighborhood than in, say, Circo Foador, which is bordered by the postcard Arcos da Lapa. Clearly the organizers knew this.
The idea was always, first and foremost, to revitalize the party in the public in the North, to stimulate curiosity and to mobilize people from the surrounding areas to the bridge they were already accustomed to occupying – only, now, only to attend discussions on literature with intellectual authorities from all over the world.
During the first five days of the festival, the Frenchmen Malcolm Ferdinand and Merry Fanon – daughter of Frantz Fanon, author of “The Wretched of the Earth” – the Martinican Patrick Chamoiseau, the American Michel Alexandre, the Malian Manthia Diawara, and the Cameroonian Bonaventura Ndikong, the Berlin-based curator responsible for the current São Paulo Art Biennale, visited.
It’s quite the cast. There were great insights into the curatorial choices that Rio founder Julio Ludimir made with French-Senegalese scholar Mami Fatou Niang, such as bringing in the immortal Anna Maria Gonçalves to speak with Italian documentary filmmaker Fred Curneau about art made from traces of black memory.
There were many high-profile discussions in the first week – and they continue in the program which runs from Thursday (27) until Sunday (30) with other eye-catching guests such as British director Steve McQueen and North American writers Dion Brand and Christina Sharp.
It is unfortunate that some tables were emptyer than in the 2024 edition. Ultimately, transportation challenges require good faith to overcome on the part of attendees who do not live in the area, and the processes of forming new audiences are not instantaneous.
The potential is definitely buzzing. Just look at the excitement with which teens and young adults participated in the grand slams held in the adjacent space offered by Flop, an investment the literary festival is making with a steady hand in spoken word poetry for new generations.
It’s also no surprise that the bridge has been packed with performances by rapper Mano Brown — who just released a book about his podcast “Mano a Mano” — and dance music sensation Bayley Charm, who, yes, has continued to be hosted there as a matter of course.
It is Flop, after all, who is asking for permission to turn an asphalt already overflowing with culture into something with a slightly different character. And so, between successes and mistakes, he makes his way.
The journalist traveled at the invitation of the festival