Gil & Moti blog: From Rio with Love
During residency at Capacete – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,March - August 2017
Mondriaan Fund International Artist in Residency Program Grant
New neighbour
We were relocated; New home brings with it new luck and of course new neighbours. With one particular we made good friends. He spotted us from the gate, climbed on top of it, and to his owners' surprise, he jumped up to the tree above us. To end up the welcoming show he landed on her shoulder and gave us a kiss. That night we dreamt that our bananas were all eaten except just one. On the following morning we thought that it was a sign, and so we acted the Carioca way by playing the Jogo do Bicho. We bet with 6 Brazilian Reais on one animal: the MACACO (English: monkey). And that was the first time that we won; Exactly 36 Reais. We saved the sum for a good future opportunity that didn’t arrived late.
Change NAME, change luck
The following evening we went to the touristic spot Copacabana. As we went off the bus, we saw our first local AMIGO; ’ALAN PATRICK’ that lives on the streets. It has been a while since the last time we saw him. We bought him dinner with the 36 reais. Nowadays he names himself Pelé (after the Brazilian famous football player);”Change name, change luck”, he said, and added that he has relocated himself to be closer to the beach.
Change of strategy delivers a fortune
The Jogo do Bicho game was invented in 1892 by an ambitious developer who bought farmlands, in the east of Rio city centre, and changed it to the hip suburbia of that time. As a marketing strategy he founded there a recreation attraction: the RioZoo. At that time Brazil transformed from colonial monarchy to independent republic and was unstable politically, structurally and financially. The young RioZoo failed to earn neither from paying visitors nor from public funding, what pushed the developer to come up with a creative solution; The Jogo do Bicho (English: the animal game). On every entry card to the zoo was a print of one animal and a unique number. By the end of each day a winning card was drawn and his owner received a money prize. Since all other sorts of gambling where forbidden, the Jogo do Bicho and the zoo became a huge success due to the long queues of visitors to buy entry/lottery ticket.
There’s always a favela at the horizon
Wherever we are in town we see the favelas; At Ipanema beach printed in colours on beach towels, at Lapa in murals, at RioZoo behind the monkey cages, from the Jogo do Bicho selling point by the end of a long narrow staircase. While we jog along Flamengo and Botafogo coastline we see them on the hills. Back home in the reflection on the window glass of the top floor neighbour. By the entrance to the MAR (Museu de Arte Rio) behind a glass wall there is an installation; A miniature favela made by the dynamic group Projeto Morrinho, that includes artists and teenagers from the favela up the Morrinho hill. Around the corner from the museum, only few meters away, one can climb grey staircase to walk into a real favela.
