The “Bode Inspiratório” project proposes to launch, every day, a chapter of an “old-fashioned serial”, in which more than 40 writers in isolation participate, starting today with Mário de Carvalho and ending at the end of April with Luísa Costa Gomes.
"This project came out of this situation in which we find ourselves, of social isolation, and we thought: 'If doctors do their part and many people can do anything for the other, what we writers can do collectively, being closed at home?'” writer Ana Margarida de Carvalho told the Lusa agency, who, on Monday night, faced with the Covid-19 pandemic, challenged the others.
According to Ana Margarida de Carvalho, the project will work “like an old-fashioned serial”.
“One starts and the other has to continue, reading the previous ones, but more attached to what precedes it. The idea is for each person to have 24 hours to write a chapter and leave one a day”, he said, with the first chapter, authored by Mário de Carvalho, was published today on the project's Facebook page, and it should also be disseminated on other platforms.
At the beginning, the writer was expecting around 20 writers to participate, “but many more showed up”.
“Writers generally work alone, but the proposal here is that we all work together. People are so eager to be with each other and to get out of confinement that we had a very large participation”, he noted.
Among the writers participating are Inês Pedrosa, Afonso Cruz, Ana Cristina Silva, Isabela Figueiredo, Valério Romão, Luís Miguel Rainha, Afonso Reis Cabral, Patrícia Reis and Helena Vasconcelos.
Also participating, among others, are Gabriela Ruivo Trindade, Adélia Carvalho, José Fanha, Domingos Lobo, Licínia Quitério, Tiago Salazar, Ricardo Fonseca Mota, Álvaro Laborinho Lúcio, Rita Ferro and Luís Castro Mendes.
In addition to the serial, a challenge was also launched for plastic artists to show, on the same page, the works they are creating during their isolation, explained Ana Margarida de Carvalho.
António Olaio, Ana Vidigal, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Manuel João Vieira and Marta Wengorovius are some of the plastic artists who accepted the challenge.
According to the writer, at the end there should be an exhibition with the works created during isolation.
As for whether the serial could lead to a book, Ana Margarida de Carvalho said that this possibility is on the table and that “there are already some expressions of interest”, but nothing is closed.
“These are short texts and written in less than 24 hours. We are not expecting great works to come out of here, but I think it is important to keep a record of what was going on in the minds of writers in this unusual and unusual period”, he said, considering that, later on, writers can always increase the chapters, suppress some things and improve the links between the different texts.
Ana Margarida de Carvalho also believes that the writers will already leave some signs of the times in the serial, the first chapter by Mário de Carvalho being a sign of that, with a “somewhat futuristic” environment, in a laboratory inside a cave, in which "a salvation for anything" is mysteriously brought forth.
“It already brings resonances of the present time”, the writer found.
In the letter she sent to other writers on Monday, Ana Margarida de Carvalho considered this project “just a way of reacting”.
“I know that everyone will find the currents ridiculous, but literature is different, especially if they are well intertwined”, said the writer.
“It is our modest but important volunteer work, now that even ministers are calling for reading. And, if we are too many, perhaps the epidemic will end before our newsletter”, concluded Ana Margarida de Carvalho, in the letter.
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