Artists in Portugal are in a critical situation.
Protest against the European Policies of Austerity against Portugal and their Artists. The existing government extinguished the ministry of culture and is increasingly impoverishing the Portuguese People.
Artists are burning their art refusing to fade out.
Project 1. JOAO GALRAO
"Even though it was difficult to destroy ten works of art that I love, I've done it with the conviction that
this destruction will help current mentalities acknowledge the situation in which Portuguese cultural scene are.
Joao Galrão, 2012
8-17 of June 2012
" If offering ten pieces to a good cause as this one
will help bring some light into the difficult situation
amazing creators in Portugal are enduring, I am honored to do my share. Culture is as essential as the air people breathe.
Joao Vilhena, 2012"
18-27 of June 2012
Project 3. JOAO BACELAR
"Portuguese cultural scene is already burned, artist minds are burned. Instead of focusing in being creatives we are focusing in
ways to have money to eat and paying bills. When you burn your art you are burning a part of you, so it hurts.
But maybe this is a way we have to change people's minds.
Joao Bacelar, 2012"
June 28 until July 9 2012
Our Projects. Our Protests.
Project 4. RAQUEL FREIRE
""I’m an artist born with the carnation revolution, freedom and democracy.
In Portugal the european policies of austerity implemented by the actual government extinguished the ministry of Culture.
The crisis is always the excuse used in history to eliminate the artist and their work.
What is a people without culture, without art, without identity? A slave people. A people who doesn’t live, only survives.
Artists in Portugal are struggling to survive. Our creative work becoming impossible, we fight against this impossibility by putting at stake our own artistic principles, burning our works to make everybody understand that one’s cannot live without art.
As an artist, I refuse to give up.
Raquel Freire 2012"
10 until 19 of July 2012
Project 6 Alexandre Lima Sequeira
"Corruption is so established that it is advertised in the newspapers and the kids grow up thinking it's cool to be corrupt and that football is education.
I claim the blood of the Poets and the only religion I recognize is Art. I claim on behalf of the dead, offended and humiliated victims. It's insane what some insist on calling democracy in Portugal lack of Culture.
Alexandre Lima Sequeira 2012"
31 of July until 9 of August 2012
Project 7. Natercia Caneira
"Integration, sustainability and building up capacities to change our current situation are urgent measures to recreate a new stream of cultural policies. Currently in residency at Museum Bernardo, an institution without any governmental support, I’m donating my new works to be burned as an objection to the context we are all living in.
Natercia Caneira, 2012"
10 of August until 19 of August 2012
Project 8. Brigitte Dunkel
"On the situation of fellow artists and culture in Portugal and an old dream, beyond all boundaries to act together as artists for me was the opportunity as a Visual Artist from Germany, to support Art Protesters project with a group of 10 pieces:
- To enforce better working and living conditions for all artists,
- Against frivolous neglect and abandonment of existing structures by politics and economics, in Portugal - in Europe - everywhere in the world.
For each artist, it should be mandatory to never give up and keep going against all odds - that's my little message after the beep:
IN ART WE TRUST !
Brigitte Dunkel, 2012"
20 of August until 29 of August 2012
Project 9. Best Moments celebrating the 100 days/ 100 videos on air
Joao Galrao, Joao Vilhena, Joao Bacelar, Raquel Freire, Joao Aires, Alexandre Sequeira Lima, Natercia Caneira, Brigitte Dunkel
30 of August until 8 of September 2012
Project 5. JOAO AIRES
"I am not in Portugal because the whole situation of my life led me to another country. But I sympathise with the artists in Portugal and so I decided to burn portraits of great artists that marked times.
The question is how would I put the world's history without the history of their artists.
In response to the extinction of the ministry of culture, with me to this group of artists to mark a position of non-indifference.
Joao Aires, 2012" from Brasil
20 until 29 of July 2012
Project 11. André Fradique
"The work I present is the symbolic burn of "The Corrupt" as a form of elimination of this sort of cancer in the current society. It affects all areas of life ending up with the destruction of culture and therefore our lives.
André Fradique, 2012"
25 of September until 4 of October 2012
Project 10. protester deleted
"«Be not offended: I speak not as in absolute fear of you. I think our country sinks beneath the yoke: it weeps, it bleeds and each new day a gash is added to her wounds.» W. Shakespeare, Macbeth (c.1606)
Project 12. Beatriz Albuquerque
Antonio Manfredi, Director of the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) in Naples, Italy, protested against the Italian Ministry of Culture by destroying and burning Art "To Save All Art." One of the art pieces destroyed by Manfredi was ACTivism (2007), a video art by Beatriz Albuquerque.
As a tribute to Manfredi's actions and to pinpoint the Portuguese problem in the Arts: I propose to burn 10 mementos from the video ACTivism.
ACTivism is a video that praises the exploration of target and influential words that will function in the audience as a way to remember, and transform people, both on the inside immediately while experiencing the text, and perhaps even on the outside after contemplation of the piece.
With transformational activism, even small actions from the "inside out" - such as burning Art "To Save All Art"- can make a difference in the long run to create meaningful change in the world.
4 of October until 13 of October 2012
