At the exhibition OUR DREAMS DON’T FIT IN YOUR BALLOT BOXES at the National Museum of Contemporary Art – the Chiado Museum, the unexpected happened as one of the guests stopped amid the people assembled for the exhibition’s opening, and unexpectedly interpreted the piece Acordai (Awake!), by Fernando Lopes-Graça, a resistance song dating back to the times of the dictatorship. This guest was Ana Maria Pinto, the same lyric soprano and artivist that could be seen, along with several other people present at the opening, in my videos and book available there, giving to it all a semiologic dimension. Followed by the crowd of bemused guests, the singer went down the steps towards Antigone, the Greek drama character symbolizing the transgressive struggle for rightfulness.

Antigone was represented as a sleeping princess whom the guests tried to wake up by throwing peas at her (a scenical contribution by Coletivo Negativo, who also created the costumes and props for this). After this short scene, I read a statement declaring: “We stand tonight in occupation of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, in the Chiado. We occupy the museum, not against the museum, but in defence of it (...) This is no make-believe, no play acting, and we are no characters in a play, but we are making together a great performance. A performance to which, from this moment on, you are all playing a part in – those of you who will support it as well as those who will oppose it".

Meanwhile, dozens of pre-organised occupiers, mixed in with the public (Boal would have called them “spectators”), and other people joining in spontaneously, busied themselves with extracting from Antigone’s reclining chair – a piece of furniture used as a Trojan horse – all sorts of sleeping bags and materials that had been hidden there in prevision of spending the night in occupation at the Museum, like placards reading “+ CULTURE = + EDUCATION = + DEMOCRACY”.

In the spirit of relational and participative art, we had a civic assembly at the Museum to discuss artistic, cultural, social and political questions.
A month later (17/08/2014) after Act I was completed, the show left the MNAC Museum and moved to the National museum of National Art, where Act II was to take place. There, 73 people (in reference to article 73 of the Portuguese Constitution, about the democratisation of the access to culture), all dressed in black, motionless, staged a poetic happening of dozens of living statues, reproducing the attitudes of the human figures represented in the paintings and statuary hanging about them in the Museum, like many tableaux-vivants. At the same time, they were chanting the following polyphonic mantra "We are art, in front of art, in mourning for art, standing up for art”. At that moment, in that place, they themselves became art.

A month later (15/09/2014), following Act I (MNAC) – OUR DREAMS DON’T FIT IN YOUR BALLOT BOXES and Act II (MNAA) – YOUR DREAMS DON’T FIT IN OUR BALLOT BOXES, there was an Act III (ANP) – BALLOT BOXES WHERE DREAMS DON’T FIT SLOWLY DIE. This time the performance consisted of a happening starting with dozens of people reading poetry out loud in the main courtyard of the Ajuda National Palace, producing an improvised cacophony of poetic meanings. A moment later another, more subversive layer was added to the scene as a group of human-bodied pigs, in suits and ties, came in and destroyed the poetic atmosphere. The participants then enacted a choreography especially designed to be filmed by a drone from the air. Only from above could one see that the dozens of spread out umbrellas formed a giant Euro sign, standing for money, a metaphor of the unique, the sacrosanct criterion.

As a whole, the three artivist performances were putting into practice the concept previously conveyed by images in the Act I video installation and discussed theoretically in my book An Essay on Artivism – Video and Performance, namely that art can give power to people, the human body being the more democratic and universal medium to achieve it, since everyone has a body. The fact that all this can happen through the action of the body brings up the concept of affect. This concept, coined by Spinoza, has applications in psychological and philosophical contexts, having since been broadly developed by authors like Deleuze, Guattari or Massumi. In a nutshell, affect has to do with the capacity bodies have to affect or be affected by the energy of their actions and attitudes, in the realm of emotions. A successful counterpower performance is precisely the one that in a way exerts affect on those who experience it.

The traditional ways collectives had to show off power with demonstrations in the streets require the largest possible number of participants in order to create affect and thus gain a legitimacy which in turn confers representativeness. Contrariwise, the strength of the artivist performances in the public space is more qualitative than quantitative, a counterpower in the true sense. As such, the most important thing is no longer the number of participants, but their effectiveness in questioning the established power relations in society.

As regards the more conventional and institutional forms of political protest, it is plain that the forever repeated emotionally unsatisfactory formulae and dynamics are undermining the strength of the social movements that use them. There is a real risk of weariness of the political emotion. One should remember that a body, having let go its capacity for emotion will also lose spirit, and the carrying on of un-spirited existence results in the loss of the sense of purpose, motivation, and life. At the collective level, the very spirit of the polis loses momentum, turning democracy into a lifeless, rigid institutional affair, deprived of emotion. However, what we achieved with the three artivist “Acts” is the exact opposite of this. Relational and participative art has allowed politics into the museum.

My aim in life is to have art coming into every aspect of it, and into the lives of those whose paths cross mine, transforming our existences. The following extract of the manifest I read the night of the opening of the exhibition can be understood in that sense:

“With our action tonight we can in a way change society – or not. At any rate, this action will set before us an example that might as well transform ourselves. A transformation operated by expressing greater civic awareness – more critical, challenging, creative, operative, deep and free – one not to be superficially satisfied by institutional forms and with giving a vote every 4 years, but one apt to challenge us to get more involved in our political experience. To live with more intensity and deeper emotion through our sharing of strong values, and perhaps be inspirational to others. (...) Any artivist performance is, in its own right, a public statement of the ideals of democracy. As long as active citizens like us will be ready to go beyond prevailing normatives and narrow rules, as long as we live, these ideals shall not die. Not in us, not in the streets, public squares and museums, which belong to all.”