Description of the multi-channel video installation:

Video # 1: Mourning/Fighting Statues

On the occasion of the official visit of chancellor Angela Merkel to Portugal (12/11/2012), the group Que se Lixe a Troika (The hell with Troika) covered dozens of public statues with black strips of cloth in different places in the country. It was a form of protest which, according to the group’s press release, aimed at being “more a sign of fighting back the troika than a sign of mourning (translator’s note: playing on the words luto/luta meaning mourning and struggle), in defense of democracy and our citizen rights”.

Video # 2: An Essay on Unenmployment

An action carried out by unemployed people at the social welfare office located in the Areeiro district, in Lisbon (30/09/2010), as part of a Theatre of the Oppressed workshop, a method of “invisible theatre” developped by Augusto Bual.

In protest against the waiting lines, the absurd bureaucracy and the inappropriate conditions of the place in dealing with so many unemployed people, the performers gained the support of the other unemployed present to put on together a protest that caused a huge amount of confusion.

Video # 3: We Are All Captains

A happening performed by Colectivo Negativo in front of the Parliament building in Lisbon (30/10/2012) featuring toy soldiers metaphorically besieging Parliament.

Passers-by were invited to take part in the artivist performance, helping mount an installation with thousands tiny plastic soldiers aiming their guns at the security barriers surrounding the building. At the same time, a recording of children’s voices talking about their aspirations and the future could be heard.

Video # 4: On the Plague – Urbi et Orbi

Another happening by Colectivo Negativo, this time carried out in front of the Minoistry of Health (08/04/2013) in defence of the National Health Service. A protest action against NHS budget cuts, the decline in the quality of service and the rising access costs supported by patients, with the collaboration of the percussion ensemble

Slap – hand to hand. The action consisted of allegorically haunting the Ministry of Health with medieval danse macabre characters, as well as a Doctor Plague, all reading a text adapted from Antonin Artaud’s “Theatre and the Plague”.

Video # 5: Capitalist Pig Goes Demonstrator

A man put on a suit and a tie, a pig-head mask on his head, and stood in front of a bench on the main street (Rua do Ouro) which he knew to be part of the itinerary of the large demonstration that would take place on that same day in Lisbon (2/3/2013).

When the crowd was passing by the bench, this character would wave his hand, holding a cigar, and taking posh attitudes, would defend “his” bench (translator’s note: playing on the word banco meaning bench and bank). For a couple of hours, this bossy human-shaped pig was seen standing there as a provocative caricature of the prevailing exclusive economic-financial model.

Video # 6: Luxury in the Tube

Carried out in the Lisbon underground train network (22/06/2012), this artivist performance was an initiative of the Lisbon Indignados in protest against the significant and repeated raises in the Tube fares over a short period of time. The performers put on “rich people” clothes and walked about the stations and carriages as in an animated party, having fun, dancing and drinking pseudo champagne. With an agit-prop approach, and some irony and humor, they argued that such raises would end up by making the tube to be an exclusive, instead of an inclusive public service. Something to be used only by rich people.

Video # 7: Grândola Song Interrupts a Parliamentary Session

This action by the Que se Lixe a Troika (The hell with Troika) movement is the one which has had the most widespread repercussions in the media and the biggest impact at a national level. It consisted of breaking the institutional status-quo at Parliament by interrupting a speech by Prime Minister Passos Coelho (15/02/2013). Suddenly, and totally unexpectedly, the assistance in the public galleries got up and filled the huge space of the “House of the People” with shoutings of “The people gives the orders!”

Echoing around the hall to the ears of the Head of government, the meaningful lyrics of this song (which had been the signal to start the Carnation Revolution), coming from the politically represented towards their political representatives, put dramatically in evidence the ideological conflict in which the Prime Minister was put metaphorically in the role of an opponent to the values of the April 25th Revolution. The Prime Minister himself was unwittingly enlisted in the performance, making him a performer in spite of himself.

Video # 8: Subversive Lyrics at the October 5th Commemorations

When the yearly official commemorations of the day of the proclamation of the Republic took place in a private venue with restricted access, out of bonds for ordinary citizens – Pátio da Galé (05/10/2012) – a lyric soprano got in and interpreted a theme by Fernando Lopes-Graça, Firmeza, that made history as a resistance anthem against the Estado Novo dictatorship. This artivist musical performance, with its symbolic logic of counterpower, is in many ways similar to the Grândola performance in Parliament, with the interesting difference that it showed that anyone, by himself, can have a much stronger power of intervention in the public sphere than usually assumed, even independently of collectives, party apparatus, unions, employer associations or governments. To reach this degree of power it is essential that the communication activity be an element of surprise, is done at a significant moment and place, has an emotional dimension, and gets broadcast in the media or the internet.

Video # 9: Dumbledore Army in the Tube

This is an action of subvertising carried out in the Lisbon underground by the Exército de Dumbledore collective in protest against the current politic-economic system, on the occasion of the state visit of Angela Merkel to Portugal (12/11/2012). Subvertising is subversive action carried out on advertisement posters, mupis and other types of in- and outdoors advertising, by either altering the brand’s original message or putting an altogether different message of their own in its place, with a creative logic of anticapitalist piracy.

Video # 10: Flag Exchange at Council House

At night, a man wearing a mask of Darth Vader (the famous Star Wars villain) climbed up a stepladder to get to the balcony of Lisbon’s Council House to take away the usual flag and raise the old flag of the Monarchy (10/08/2009). Using humour and bizarreness to ridicule a symbol of the Republic and reverse the famous gesture performed there in 1910: the raising of the republican flag. The performance was recorded on video, streamlined on the internet and claimed by 31 da Armada, a right wing group. While artivist performances are usually considered to be more typically left wing, this one shows that, independently of ideological positions, they can serve as a subversive medium of counterpower, allowing any motivated person to become a political stakeholder with a place in the public sphere, exercising Democracy.