Samples Manifesto Body snatchers

Samples Manifesto Body snatchers, by Fred Coelho and Mauro Gaspar, is about creating from what already exists using the device of the “sampler” — a common practice in music creation, one which combines samples of already existing songs — and proposes the appropriation of other texts without limiting oneself to the idea of a closed work, pure or original. Through incorporating texts and ideas from other authors, sampler writing breaks with the notion of completeness and purity of a single work.
The sampler Manifesto is about being able to build from other people’s ideas “a manifesto for the culture of copy and paste, of sewing up, mixture, […], a document about the time when the words and things need to be freed from their market value and go around freely — at least in the scope of ideas and creation”, as Fred Coelho says.
Conceived originally in 2005, the MANIFESTO SAMPLER MMV > Fotogramas arrives at the hands of the reader to spread and expand the idea of sampled writing. This edition brings, even more, a second manifesto, written in 2025 — celebrating the 20 years of the first —, “Manifesto Sampler MMXXV > Fluxos”, a new textual manifesto which, according to Mauro Gaspar, seeks to “renew voices, incorporate the silenced and enlarge the horizon, celebrating the flow, the music of time”.

Excerpts
“The conceptual idea of sampler writing is to open a groove in the writing. The text is not a gated community — the groove opens and suggests new textual flows, musical, visual.”
“What ‘is incorporated’ is turned into ruins along with ‘what already exists’. Only the abyss of the lost soul is left behind. The new, unattached, without references. This is the good sample: without father nor mother. The writing as the wandering regime of orphaned letters.
The writer is no longer sovereign, he is also prey of this orphaned letter that walks around.
Only an orphaned letter can bring about a living writing.”

“The one who works with sampler writing is not the one who has nothing to say, is the one who has too many things to say, has too many voices speaking inside of oneself, and expresses them musically, as a flow, as a language and feeling processor.”

“Writing is a useless effort of forgetting what is written (in this we will never be borgean enough). That is why in literature the thefts are like memories: never fully deliberate, never completely innocent. The relations of property are excluded from language: we can use words as if our own, make them say what we want to say.”

About the authors

Fred Coelho was born in 1974, in Rio de Janeiro. With an undergraduate degree in History, he is a curator and professor at the Letras Department and the Postgraduate program in Literature, Culture and Contemporaneity at PUC-Rio. He is the father of Antonia and Maria and flamenguista.

Mauro Gaspar was born in 1967, in São Paulo. He has an undergraduate degree in Journalism and Literary Studies, and is currently devoted especially to the world of books. He is an editor, alvinegro and Nina’s father.

The paths of Fred and Mauro crossed when both were getting their PhD in Literature at PUC-Rio. There, these body snatchers — or Artur Miró and Matafina — conceived of the first “MANIFESTO SAMPLER MMV > FOTOGRAMAS”, which, throughout the years, influenced a lot of people inside and outside of academia. In 2025, celebrating 20 years of this textual event, they wrote “MANIFESTO SAMPLER MMXXV > FLUXOS”. Together they created and organized the collection O Livro do Disco, published by Cobogó, which dissects important records of Brazilian and international music.

Specifications
Title Manifesto Sampler Invasores de corpos [Samples Manifesto Body snatchers]
Author Fred Coelho e Mauro Gaspar
Language Portuguese
Page count 136 p.
Publisher Cobogó
ISBN 978-65-5691-191-5
Cover Ana Dias
Format Softcover
Size 11,5 x 15,3 cm
Year 2025
Price R$ 69,00