Calls for the restitution of artworks and ‘important pieces’ to their countries or communities of origin are extremely complex as the terms of the issue itself are problematic. I do not believe it is possible to formulate a universally valid general principle. Only a subtle case-by-case analysis is possible.

The first question is: what is to be returned?

Robert Musil’s essays, recently translated into Portuguese under the title Ensaios [Essays], are the perfect embodiment of an era of which we have only recently perhaps been able to make sense. Nélio Conceição, a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at NOVA University Lisbon, sheds light on their wide scope.

With his book At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, published in 2005, the American historian Roger Ekirch changed many ideas about past and present sleeping habits. He showed, for example, how the Industrial Revolution radically transformed both the time and the way in which people slept, especially in the cities, passing from a biphasic sleep to a consolidated eight-hour sleep, which he classifies as ‘a modern invention’. Sleep and insomnia are matters of growing concern in contemporary societies. All these topics are addressed by the professor of the University of Virginia Tech in an interview conducted by Diogo Vaz Pinto.

Éric Marty, the editor of the complete works of Roland Barthes, traces in this essay the history, effect and declinations of that famous text entitled The Death of the Author. He shows how this was inscribed in an ideological puritanism of the time and a theoretical position in favour of the maximum autonomy of the work, thus demanding the invisibility of the author's image. It was Roland Barthes himself who, in a sophisticated way, dismantled this dogma.

Rosi Braidotti is a philosopher and feminist. Along her philosophical path, this Italian-Australian woman passed through some of the fundamental stages of contemporary feminism, from Simone de Beauvoir, but then went down her own road. It is a road that is somewhat distant from known accounts of the theory of gender (such as those by Judith Butler) and the criticism of identity fixations. Her voice therefore sounds rather unconventional, as we can see in this interview.

In conversation with design critic and curator Frederico Duarte, Dutch graphic designer, researcher and professor Ruben Pater talks about his books and his conception of design as a practice of citizenship. This ‘Metropolitan’ is about bringing design closer to the subjects which help us better understand our place and our role in the city (or in the polis).

At the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Paris, curated by Helena de Freitas, a new exhibition places the work of Rui Chafes and Alberto Giacometti side by side and head to head. The magnetic force of attraction between the two bodies of work is clear to the viewer, in what brings them together and what keeps them apart. Nicolao Federico, writer, philosopher and curator, is familiar with the work of both Giacometti and Chafes and writes about the artists and the exhibition in which they come together.

On the other hand, after visiting Rui Chafe's exhibition in Paris, the poet, Manuel de Freitas, wrote the artist a letter. The starting point for the letter is a quotation from Alberto Giacometti that speaks of the imperfection, the virulence and the violence of poetry, painting, and sculpture. The poet talks to us about the darkness, the silence, the abyss and the night that are so palpable in this exhibition. And, as always happens with Manuel de Freitas, he talks to us about death.

In 2023, three exhibitions by Rui Chafes were held in Lisbon and Porto. With a career spanning four decades and a body of work that uses sculpture, drawing and text as its mediums, he is a key figure in contemporary art in Portugal and one of those who has achieved the greatest international projection. In this section, the artist, essayist and university professor João Sousa Cardoso talks about this oeuvre, revisiting the three exhibitions and leaving a future memory of them.

Italian writer Salvatore Settis is an art historian known for his public intervention and essays on the threats raised by political and economic management to cultural heritage. This is one of the topics approached in this interview, which also deals with the pressure that historical cities are subjected by tourists, as well as the role and responsibility of architects.

Bernardo Carvalho, a writer from Rio de Janeiro, ventures into the city of São Paulo and studies its less obvious side. Sometimes, he examines it through the strong lenses of a Lévi-Strauss; at others he sketches a psychological portrait of it on the basis of certain symptoms.