Porto Público

A society is called a State when it has a collective aim, and according to Aristotle it aims at the highest good, this good is of the State itself and not of each citizen’s as individual.

Naturally, thought Aristotle, this State shall have rulers and subjects and is to be governed in a way ‘where everyman can act best and live happily’. This happiness is bond to wisdom and not to material possessions, but to be wise one has to have leisure time and not be engaged in everyday life survival, therefore wise man must be provided with property. Here comes a vicious circle, those who are wise must be entrusted with property, those with property and free time will certainly be wiser. So property is again a condition to rule and in the end of the day Aristotle polity is an oligarchy.

Nowhere in his treatise Aristotle considers a State without rich and poor; even though he affirms that the best States are those where the middle class is the larger class; as a matter of fact it could be accepted – there have been always rich and poor, but is troubling when it is never questioned why are always the same getting the best gifts from Fortune, for it seems that there is not much class interchange in his treatise.

Education is paramount to Aristotle’s constitution, and it is a matter of the State; this reveals which instrument is used to maintain each player in its own position, for education is the same among equals but some are equals as possible rulers and others equal as permanent subjects. Aristotle will use a similar argument to Plato’s to differentiate natural rulers and natural subjects making an analogy with the anatomy of the soul where one part – rational – naturally rules and the other – irrational – is ruled. Again why some are soul and others body is difficult to accept as natural.

Now, let the citizens rule! But what is a citizen? A citizen is not an individual who lives in a certain State, he is the one who takes part of the government of the State; and the constitution will be different if this government is in the hand of one, or of few, or of many; and of course governing to the common interest otherwise they are perversions. The best constitutions are then, according to Aristotle, kingship, aristocracy and polity or simply constitution, which is a ‘fusion between oligarchy and democracy, inclining towards democracy in an attempt to unite the freedom of the poor and the wealth of the rich.’

In practice there are only two types of government: oligarchies and democracies, both perversions, or imperfect constitutions. A form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority govern, and an oligarchy when the rich, being few, rule. Focusing only on Aristotle notion of democracy, we find that it arises out of a revolution based on ‘the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.’ With which he disagrees, because men are rarely absolutely equal, the simple fact of being young or old, he would argue, differentiate men. And because a democracy governs towards the interests of the majority and not of the common is, therefore, a perversion.

Nonetheless the main characteristics of democracy, for Aristotle, are: ‘the election of officers by all out of all; and that all should rule over each, and each in his turn over all’; the appointment to every office is made by lot; the possession of property should not be required for offices; no one should hold an office twice, and this tenure should be brief; all men should judge, in all matters, or in the most important; the assembly should be supreme over all causes, or the most important. This highest type of democracy is based strictly on equality, rich and poor have the same right to hold office and the multitude has supreme power. But because it is the highest it is also the worst type.


As a counterbalance I propose a look at 5 Factories, the 2006 documentary by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler about five self-managed factories in Venezuela, which seems to show that a democratic rule is possible. After the Bolivarian Revolution (term coined by the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to refer to the social movement, or twenty first century socialism in South-America) many workers in Venezuela took charge of factories that they had worked on and had been closed down by their former administrators as ruined and led them to full operational plants. Organized in cooperatives, the five examples given in this documentary portray a different way of managing a company, a social administration way. Taking the example of the presented CAIGUA tomato sauce factory, which won a government subsidy - already during Chavez legislation – to invest in modern equipment and enlarge the range of products, but which subsidy was diverted for personal expenses, I will demonstrate how a democratic management is done. The workers, realizing, that the factory was working only at 10% of its maximum capability, due to lack of raw material but specially due to ill administration, saw in the misuse of the government’s subsidy and the lack of payment the excuse they were looking for to take the management of the plant in their hands. Occupying the factory day and night over three months, they prevented the former administration to enter the facilities. Encouraged by Chavez government they constituted a cooperative, that gives shape to their social struggles. Part of this different way of managing a company, which is directed towards the benefits of the whole community and not only of the company itself, CAIGUA helped the local producers with machinery in order to augment the producing of their raw material, tomatoes. The company is managed by a temporary board of directors, selected from the body of workers, which works closely with the assembly all, 58, workers. All the projects and decisions pass by this assembly where all the opinions count. It seems only possible because there is such a small body of workers, critics of democracy would argue; but in another example presented in this documentary, an aluminium plant, the same management is being done with 3200 workers. Part of the success of these co-managed companies is due to the fact that all workers are informed of all the procedures necessary for the company’s production and management; that all workers are involved in all decisions and also because part of this type of cooperative administration involves a social-political engagement and education. At CAIGUA all workers earn the same salary, being administrators, technicians, or operators; and the surplus is distributed between the community by supporting education centres, medical care or opening their canteen tho the most needed. The aim of a democratic state, Aristotle would say, is liberty. Listening to these workers one can understand this idea of liberty, of not being constrained to express one’s opinion and ideas regarding the management of the common, but they are also aware that it does not mean simply licence - as described by many democratic critics.


The danger for Aristotle is that in democracy ‘the people becomes a monarch’, which grows into despotism. The best democracy, for him, would then be that which is subject to the law. The multitude is not call to decide upon every matter, specially the most important, for those would be in the hands of the magistrates; and the best citizens are in charge, so the more qualified represent the uninformed.

Yet, we realize in this documentary that when a worker feels that his opinion counts; that the company also belongs to him and that the result of his labour will benefit not the company and its few owners but himself and his community; he will be engaged in aiming at that Aristotelian highestgood, which is not the good only of himself but of the community, and ultimately he is HAPPY.

Aristotle, 1921, The Works of Aristotle, Oxford, Clarendon Press
Azzellini, D. and Ressler, O. 2006. 5 Factories. [DVD].

It reminds me of an overheard comment on how fashionable participation is nowadays, from televote to educational services in museums ... to NASA. With no sarcasm I say, when not mandatory there is something really powerfull about participation ...

Participants will not be just anyone, for the suggestions are sellected 'based on science rationale', it is, therefore, targeted to science students and professionals. I have created my account but since I could not provide any further rationale then curiosity I won't be able to suggest any target for NASA's camera nor receive my own picture of Mars terrain, oh well, "public" is only universal in theory anyway!

Transmission. Why do people want to connect to something, touch and be touched? Have I touched St. Peter’s foot in Rome? I don’t recall doing so, but I do remember perfectly realizing the power of a single touch. There is a saying in Portuguese that the continuing dripping of soft water in hard stone will eventually open a hole. Maybe that was what went through my mind, and if I touched the saint’s foot was not so much with the desire to connect with the divine but with that mass of people who repeated a gesture over and over until the metal foot became soft, polished and shapeless. That would be for me the morbid allure, being part of an endless chain. The power of the repetition of an act. But this is not the metaphor for the power of the people, the one that destroys social constructions, rather is the repetition leading to meaninglessness. Rancière knew that already when we saw in the power of the people not the power of the population or of the majority, ‘but the power of anyone at all’.

The power of subjectification, of becoming a subject of politics, which is always something ‘defined in an interval between identities.’ (Rancière, 2006, 59) between different names of subjects. That’s when politics occurs, and like the women that in 1955 refuse to leave the white people’s seat in an Alabama bus, politics implies: ‘the action of subjects who, by working the interval between identities, reconfigure the distributions of the public and the private, the universal and the particular,’ that are fixed by models of government and practices of authority i.e., by police.

These repetitions in Rome, Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostela, and Munich are full of hope and so are our votes in each and every election, which lead to a change of flavor but do not a new aliment. Rancière will call it an oligarchic invention to look for consent, and the representative democracy portrayed as only representing the interest of an elite. Universal suffrage is not a natural consequence of democracy, he will further, it is its struggle, the democractic struggle against the privatization of the process of enlarging the sphere of State intervention. Pursuing ‘the recognition, as equals and as political subjects those that have been relegated by State law to the private life of inferior beings – wage workers and women;’ and ‘the recognition of the public character of types of spaces and relations that were left to the discretion of the power of wealth;’ (Rancière, 2005, 55) and finally the enlargement of the struggles to ‘assert the public character of spaces, relations and institutions regarded as private.’ (Rancière, 2006, 56)

This redistribution of spheres and the subjectification inherent to it is paramount to Rancière’s maintenance of democracy, or is where democracy actually operates, and understanding what democracy is means renouncing to a vision of a world governed by the multitude and trust it to those singular and precarious acts on political subjects.

Which kind of participation is possible in Plato's aristocracy?


In his book Republic, Plato supposedly transcribes a conversation between Socrates and some young Athenians that starts by analysing what is justice leading to the creation of a just city. This ideal city follows – what was identified by Leon Battista Alberti during the Renaissance as – concinnitas universarum partium, or the harmony and concord in all the parts in relation to one another, where each and every organ mind its own performance and to remove one part compromises the whole. Being on one’s place is here proved to be the required participation in this city. Divided in four elements: wisdom, bravery, temperance and justice; Socrates will analyse the city’s first three elements believing that the remainder would be justice, the gathering’s inquire. As the appetite is the largest element in an individual, followed by courage and both governed by his reason, the smallest element; so is the city ruled by a few wise men and women or by a king with a true love for philosophy, helped by soldiers and a larger amount of auxiliaries. Each element does it occupation, that should be a single one if to be done with excellence, and respect the rule of the few and this harmony and respect to the wise element is what makes a man or a city just. To be sure, in such a city to be a just man means performing the assign task, be it to be a shoemaker or a philosopher, according to one’s gifts and training; and this is the required participation, to be just.

Why then, have I been dreaming about the reasons to escape Plato's perfect city and fall into the extravagant excesses of a democracy? For I truly have.

Until the city is ruled by philosophers there shall be no constitution worth being called a city, under this oath Socrates debates on the reasons why philosophers are considered useless by the multitude and nevertheless are the right ones for the job. The reason being that philosophers are the ones with access to the essential forms lighten by good and revealed by pure reason. To achieve this level of knowledge requires years of training in several subjects and to be considered as guardians requires a just city. Democracy for him is not a just constitution but the third level of decay from the desired one, aristocracy. An oligarch’s son, the democrat is blinded by license; all appetites are alike for him, good and evil; everyone has equal participation in civic right, liberty and equality is his motto. Jusque ici tout va bien. However it is not the fall but the landing that matters, and as is noticed in their conversation to do anything in excess seldom fails to provoke a violent reaction to the opposite extreme. Democracy destruction shall be by the metamorphosis of the object of its supreme good – freedom, into its worse shape: excessive slavery, and with this tiranny arises.

This hate of democracy is as old as its very origin, ancient Greece. And today’s hate formula is not against democracy itself, conversely to Plato’s idea, democracy is not a corrupt form of government, the problem is about the people, democratic civilization. What provokes the crisis of democracy is nothing other that the intensity of democratic life (Ranciére, 2006, 7).


PLATO. 1997. Republic. Wordsworth.
RANCIÉRE, J. 2006. Hatred of Democracy. Verso.

Brian Holmes write on the catalogue that "all of the activists-artists in this exhibition, and probably most of the visitors as weel, took part somehow in the inspiring and dramatic events created by the movement of movements - events that started well before Seatle, for example at the Carnival against Capital in the city of London on June 18th 1999, or at any one of the surprising and often hilarious Reclaim the Streets parties... some of us will meet again and again beneath the teargas and water canons ... only to learn that the leader of our supposedly democratic countries cared nothing for the votes that were cast in the streets." meaning that new forms of protest have to be experimented?

“Carey Young once wrote that she explores ‘how the artist’s role, agency and identity could or might need to change in response to the collapsing categories between business, politics and culture’. She has been appropriating corporate ideology and manipulating it in order to examine the era of global capitalism. Recently, she has focused on the law apparatus and its realtionship to civil government. For example, with the assistance of a legal team, she once created a United-States-Constitution-free zone within a New York-based gallery. Contractual agreements with the visitor have been one fo Young’s major strategies, and Donorcard (2005 –ongoing) is one of the works that better represents this aspect of her practice. Wallet-size human organ donor cards in general, and the design of such a document issued by the British NHS in particular, inspired Young in the making of this work. Each time it is on view, Young previously signs a limited edition of Donorcards copies, which are free to take and also have to be signed by the viewer in order to become art, a status that will last only while both of them are alive. In a new instalment of its preservation, for Frieze Projects Young is signing the work at the booth during the VIP preview of FAF. bringing together the language of jurisdiction, authorship, and rituals of collecting, Young comments on the forms of power ruling the art world.

Donorcard was created with the assistance of a legal team comprising Robert Lands of Finers Stephens Innocent LLP and Dr. Jaime Stapleton of Birkbeck College.”

"Mining institutional critique, community-based movements, self-organization traditions, and activism, their proposals address the production of symbolic value in the “age of questioned capitalism” – an expression suggested by the global financial crises. Through their socially engaged practice “impossible exchange” establishes a counter-public sphere that radically envisions change on the economic, political, and cultural levels."

By principle in Portugal everyone is an organ donor unless one manifests the will against it to the health ministry (RENNDA) in a system of contracting/out, thus taking advantage of people's natural inertia the country has an enormous potential donors list . In the UK we have a completely different approach, one has to join organ donation. Hence the former has a non donors card, while the latter a donor card.

Politically, we can say in the Portuguese case that the state (even though one has the possibility to sign out) is taking the decision for the citizens by presuming that everyone would want to be an organ donor, whilst in the UK the citizens are accounted for the decision, but then the state has to campaign for people to meet that responsibility. Uk's example seems the most democratic to me, in an horizon of a social responsible society were our relation to others - human beings and not - is constantly being activated and reevaluated, but I also know that most of the time we function in automatic pilot, and that's why the Portuguese example might be more effective for the case presented, but then what does that tell us about a more general political engagement?

His work for the 2007 exhibition Depósito. Anotações sobre Densidade e Conhecimento at Reitoria da Universidade do Porto, curated by Paulo Cunha e Silva, was a Street Museum (I am searching the web for information, but it is difficult to find, text or images on the specific piece). I remember calling it a generous piece of art. Basically it was a shelf made of wood, that stood on four legs. On the one side a transparent acrylic surface, on the other a wooden plate, that could be lifted up. Passers-by were suppose to place on the self compartiments whatever they might find interesting, or just happen to have in their pockets, and this would be there on exhibition. The piece was outside the University building, in the public space. It mimicked the academy selves, but had a democratic use.This street furniture or invitation was also close to the famous student Cafe Piolho, so it had plenty use, and also vandalism, it did not last until the end of the exhibition. Still it was a similiar proposition to those I have been doing in my own practice. Invited for an exhibition that dealt with the depot of the Science University, and questions of displaying, preserving and educating, Sancho Silva takes the question to the streets, what is worth to present, protect and discuss?

I met Heath last summer in Bristol and went on one of his triming tours. He keeps track of the apple trees (which are mainly along the Avon Gorge) and cleans them from parasitical plants. At some point a map of these trees is made public so people can harvest them. I guess this is part of his commitment to nature but also reclaiming this common space - natural ground in the interstices of private and state property. By taking the fruit of the "blind" farmers planting, people are picking the fruit of their own doing :-) for this trees are most probably there because people throw away the apple cores after eating them. There are several phases in this project: the unintentional planting; the identification, listing and nurture of the apple trees and finally the publication of their location and invitation for a public harvest. The public enters first in this last bit, harvesting the fruits of heaths labour, but clearly is invited as well to 'adopt' his own orchard.

I remember striking a pose for a polaroid camera at Museu do Chiado, while pressuring a chair sideways to my body with my right upper warm. I stuck that polaroid photograph inside a dictionary, not to lose it, and maybe as a way to revisite the action. Together with that chair I was a sculpture, the polaroid photo attest to that, with no need of being signed by the author, as 1961 Manzioni's Living Sculptures did. But did I really felt like a scupture? I just remember the desire of wanting to take part of Wurm's work, much out of a fan feeling more than wanting to experience being a sculpture. The museum surroundings, a low broad white plinth - if I remember correctly, a chair, a bucket, and maybe some other object. Those objects are there to trigger our action, to potentiate our becoming, they were not themselves the sculpture - or ready-mades, neither would we be it alone. The combination of both, body and object, were the sculpture, the action itself. Still I recall this experience just as a curious episode. Mere participation is not what is at stake for me, but its relation to politics.

(in the corridor)

"In After Darwin: Contemporary Expressions, major artists and writers exhibit newly-commissioned and existing work, inspired by Charles Darwin's book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Their pieces explore Darwin's theory that expressing emotion is not unique to humans, but is shared with animals." See NHM website

"The exhibition itself starts outside the gallery with an installation involving mirrors by Jeremy Deller and Matthew Killip in collaboration with psychologist Richard Wiseman. Not only does the reflection employ the viewer as part of the installation, but the instructions – through image and word – to display certain behaviours make this a compelling installation. The installation includes a twist that gestures to practices of surveillance and observation of the chimp and human world alike."

"The exhibition draws together the themes and methodologies that have informed the London-based artist’s practice from 1959 until the present day. The broad cross-section of works on view include Metzger’s auto-destructive and auto-creative works of the 1960s, such as his pioneering liquid crystal projections; the ongoing Historic Photographs series, which responds to major events and catastrophes; and later works exploring ecological issues, globalisation and commercialisation. Film footage of seminal performances and actions are exhibited, as well as a new, participative
installation using the archive of newspapers Metzger has been collecting since 1995."
see serpentine gallery website

I was particularly interested in the following piece, Historic Photographs: To Crawl Into - Anschluss Vienna March 1938 1996 (here above), where one had to crawl under a big piece of fabric to be able to see a photograph on the floor and on how that changes our relation/interpretation to its content. A grainy photograph of people kneeled down, the association with the horrors of the second world war is immediate, even before reading the title, Anschluss, the annexation of Austria. I looked for the image on google images today, and realized the importance it had to involve my whole body in the experience of this art work, how fragile and pathetic I felt and how strange it was to realise that those portrayed on the image were looking much more confused and anxious... the privacy of my gaze and the impossibility of seeing the whole image...