Three essays are presented in this publication, two of which premiered in Portugal during the public action Impasse, with the performance "Aqueles que só fazem meia revolução apenas cavam a sua sepultura", by João Pedro Vale & Nuno Alexandre Ferreira (JPV+NAF), later presented at the Centre Pompidou on June 5th 2019 under the title Those who make the Revolution halfway only dig their own graves, as part of the MOVE 2019 Festival.

Organised by the artist duo in their studio on February 9th 2019, the Impasse action also included the participation of the artists Vasco Araújo, Teatro Cão Solteiro, André e.. Teodósio, Diogo Bento and Tiago Alexandre, and the curators Ana Cristina Cachola and Marta Espiridião, with the motto of denouncing the reality of the João Nascimento Costa neighbourhood where the artists' studio is located, a stigmatised, precarious and deprived social neighbourhood, abandoned to its fate and suffering by default from the migration and ghettoisation of surplus workers, a policy of sanitisation around drug use and the real estate speculation that plagues the city.

The texts published here activate some of these issues, based on an encounter between the three artists during the first Yellow Vests protests in Paris in 2018.

The Serralves Museum is presenting the first anthological exhibition of the work of the Portuguese artists, João Pedro Vale & Nuno Alexandre Ferreira. The exhibition, held in Serralves Villa, will combine a broad selection of works by the two artists, including new works specially conceived for this occasion. 

The artists have been exploring a series of topics as the relationship between folklore and national identity, fascism and culture in the former regime, the negationisms and policies of memory, violence and silencing perpetuated by dictatorships, but also, in a continuous and relevant manner, the impact of HIV/AIDS and the stigma and prejudice towards the LGBTQIA+ community.