Those who believe that the future will always be worse should cast their minds back 2500 years to classical Athens to discover the original dilettante influencers, if by such we mean those who apparently make a living almost without lifting a finger. Socrates wrote nothing – at least nothing for which we have a record – and yet he is a milestone in the history of philosophy. So let us not be so alarmed by the wave of influencers surrounding us today, but rather by the people who are so easily influenced.

If words were tangible objects, ‘innovation’ would be an object of indefinite shape, made of ordinary plastic. Something that is everywhere: in the wind, stuck to the ground, floating around on endless islands in the middle of the ocean. Swirling in the Earth’s orbit; embedded in our lungs, flowing in tiny particles in our blood. A shapeless, colourless thing that, through a quantum leap of some uncertain alchemy, can take on any configuration, any colour.

The staging, in Bayreuth, of The Ring of the Nibelung, directed by Valentin Schwarz, is the object of an analysis that considers it a failure due to the way it treats or omits the theological question in Wagner’s work.

In this article, Alexandra Prado Coelho, a journalist who specialises in food and gastronomy, raises the issue of ethics in food and the axiological values we project onto what we eat, such as white and brown bread. She also reveals how these values change and are inverted over time and become interlinked with cultural and social codes.

Isabella Ducrot is an artist, writer and collector, in whose work fabrics play a key, even foundational role. These fabrics, which have distant or near origins in both time and space, are the bearers of memory, variety, originality and truth. At the age of 94, her artistic recognition and international media acclaim continue to grow. In her studio, located in the magnificent Palazzo Dora Pamphilj, she continues to work, a modern Penelope who weaves but does not need to undo her work in order for it to become infinite. It is against this backdrop of a new ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ that this conversation on behalf of Electra takes place. Isabella Ducrot talks to Leander Gussmann and Nora Iosia, the person in charge of her studio, in a tone in which the intimacy of her voice reaches us with the same subtlety as the intimacy of her highly creative work, which we also have the privilege of showing in this ‘Portfolio’.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has moved into a phase marked by the law that defines Israel as the “nation state of the Jewish people”, adopting Hebrew as its only official language. Donatella Di Cesare, an Italian philosopher, and Éric Marty, a leading French voice in literary studies, have both written and taken a public stance on Israel, Judaism and the Jewish question. Here they comment on the law, taking different paths as to its meaning, reach and consequences.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has moved into a phase marked by the law that defines Israel as the “nation state of the Jewish people”, adopting Hebrew as its only official language. Donatella Di Cesare, an Italian philosopher, and Éric Marty, a leading French voice in literary studies, have both written and taken a public stance on Israel, Judaism and the Jewish question. Here they comment on the law, taking different paths as to its meaning, reach and consequences.

Robert Musil, author of The Man without Qualities, with his critical attitude of Viennese modernism, expressed huge scepticism about the idea of progress. Dario Gentili, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Roma Tre University, examines and comments on this idea.

Continuing his journey around the Mediterranean, André Príncipe visited Tunisia. In La Goulette, at the port of Tunis, in the 19th century called ‘la petite Sicile’, he attended a concert by Badiaa Bouhrizi, known by her stage name Neysatu. It is with this singer songwriter, author and composer, an activist for freedom and social justice, that the photographer and editor converses, on behalf of Electra, about politics, music, djinns and African identities. Words join images here in an interview that addresses some of the themes of our global contemporaneity.

‘If the year 2020 had to choose to be a country, it would choose to be Serbia,’ we read in this intense and beautiful diary written in the Serbian capital at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has taken hold of everything. And from Belgrade we can see the world. Its author, Jelena Bogavac, is a stage director, playwright, writer, poet, performer and editor who actively participates in major international festivals on contemporary theatre. Based on her personal, family, artistic and intellectual experience, Jelena observes, thinks and concludes: ‘Life is passing us by right now. And after is not even close.’ ‘Huge fear is replaced with huge madness.’ In this diary, where she has put these ideas on paper, the days are so present they need no numbering. They are her days and those of her city – they are ours, too, and those of our places, and at times of no place at all.