What We Cannot Forget

A participatory performance of collective memory, care, and continuity.

What We Cannot Forget is a participatory performance co-created with Edson Pavoni as the opening ritual of his solo exhibition of the same title, curated by Carollina Lauriano in 2023. The performance directly engages with Brazil’s collective trauma from the pandemic — where over 700,000 lives were lost amid governmental neglect. In a country historically marked by unresolved traumas, What We Cannot Forget emphasized our ethical duty to remember — and the power that comes from refusing to repeat the mistakes made in the past. The performance was created as a ritual for collective remembrance, as a way to honor the personal and societal transformations triggered by the pandemic.

“What can you not forget about the pandemic in Brazil?” was the question that guided the performance, inviting participants to reveal, elaborate, and honor memories that marked them. Through a slow, choreographed ritual, the performance unfolded as a safe space to share, feel and let go. Rooted in interdisciplinary reflection — from Freud’s study of collective trauma, to Susan Suleiman’s theory that memory and forgetting are co-constitutive, to Vinciane Despret’s notion of remembrance as active creation — the work framed memory not as nostalgia, but as an urgent political and emotional act. By centering the experience around a single, urgent question and in an elemental ritual of touch, gaze, and voice, What We Cannot Forget created a living social sculpture — one shaped by the vulnerability, courage, and humanity of its participants. The performance revealed that remembrance is not passive: it is a conscious, bodily act — sculpted in time, space, and human relations.