A book on the moral discourse of merchandise, on commodities as ‘goods’, presented by its translator, who was also its co-editor.

A retrospective and comprehensive look on contemporary cinematographic production in Portugal, by an attentive French viewer and scholar. The national and international diffusion of Portuguese cinema and its self-representations owe much to these visions coming from abroad.

A critical reading of Alain Badiou’s lessons on the Wagner 'case' — the aesthetic-political argument for the total work of art.

Familiar and ambiguous term, originally referring to the realm of things (from the Latin res, realis) or that which concerns them. In recent years, however, this general definition has acquired a new scope. Whereas the 20th century was the age of ideology, the last decades have brought with them a new fondness for reality. It has become a habit to appeal to common sense, to the power of things, to the weight of facts and circumstances. The great doctrines of the past, deemed too abstract, have given way to concrete principles. Thinkers and politicians have settled down, planted their feet on the ground, and learned to see the world as it really is.

This article was written by a scientist, an astrophysicist who also inhabits the realms of philosophy. Its starting point is the hypothesis that the world has died, in the sense that a ‘transcendental commonality’, which the idea of a cosmos assumes, has already been lost. According to this hypothesis, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is a factor of this cosmocide that makes the question about the ‘post-Covid-19’ world inapt.

It is strange to compose a diary of what living in Queens during quarantine means. Everyone’s experience is atomized and enclosed by the walls of their apartment. These snippets of information become events that happen between the space of my phone screen and the window facing the street outside.

The phenomena of speed and acceleration determine every aspect of our reality, from cultural and social life to the economy. The coercive force that imposed an increasingly fast pace to human activity, in a crescendo that presupposes limitless resources (with enormous ecological consequences, including for the ecology of time and space) demands a dynamics that cannot slow down since it is the only guarantee of stability. Therefore, abruptly halting this system, hitting the brakes on an ultra-accelerated world, is not the deceleration defended by those who advocate ‘de-growth’. It is not the realisation of a utopia, but a colossal disaster. That is the globalised disaster that we are witnessing, caused by a viral pandemic.

His immense work, which traverses a number of disciplines, gives good reason for this interview with Boris Groys. Moving in such areas as philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, art history and media theory, he has applied his vast erudition and his originality of thought to contemporary art, its system and its institutions. Born in 1947 in the former Democratic Republic of Germany, Boris Groys grew up in the Soviet Union, where he studied Mathematics, Logic and Linguistics. When he moved to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1981, he brought with him a deep knowledge of the Russian vanguards and Soviet art. The relations between art and politics, and between the artist and society, are favoured by this former professor of the famous Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (1994–2009) who is now Global Distinguished Professor at the New York University.

Tourism is the greatest social, anthropological and economic phenomenon of our times. Its impact on the lives of cities, changes in landscapes, and countries' and regions' cultures is so great that nothing remains intact wherever it goes. Regarded by some as a source of devastation that particularly affects historical city areas (but whose waves spread far beyond urban limits) and regarded by others as the achievement of the most positive interests and the highest ideals, tourism today is a subject of debate, controversy and urban conflict. By choosing it as the central theme of this number of Electra, we wish to treat it as a complex phenomenon that invites a wide variety of analyses by different disciplines and raises varying ideological viewpoints.

In this diary, Pedro Cabrita Reis describes his senses to the world. They're all there, all five of them, shrewd, active and as alert as antennae to the news of nature and the scintillations of culture.

This sculptor, painter, sketcher, bon vivant (in its most literal sense) and citizen of the world believes that art is life without quotes and life is art without delay. He feels that the world is the largest studio and the studio is the closest world.

The pages in this diary are in facsimile form because the handwriting and sketches intertwine, entangle, interlock, possess each other and belong to each other, and only in this single, unique form do they belong to us. Here we find what, in Cabrita Reis, is the most vivid, a vitality that makes everything his.

This 'Book of Hours' is based on a private agenda and takes the form of music notation. It speaks to us of a certain poetically inhabiting the world, without which we don't inhabit it.