The kiss

José, before you know through someone else’s mouth, Porto is no longer the motor of anything, even more of a country. If the cities have now the power to bear the whole country, Porto’s engine is stuck and far away from its economic and cultural golden age. Each day it looses intellectual mass and has today less inhabitants than any of its satellite cities. Many hundred dwellings are empty and waiting to fall down. The public spaces and gardens have disappeared or are sterile. In the hands of economist with no scrupulous who transform the city in their hunting garden, the cultural fabric is strangulated, ripped apart and privatized. Before this, protocols are signed to make cultural even more merchandisable, looking for super industries that can transform culture into a profitable and wanted product. But which culture do you want to sell? Ah! If we remember! Culture is made everywhere, we all can be its agents and actors, at that time there will be nothing to sell for there is no search for that we already possess. I, thus, give you my word that I will continue to produce and involving other in what I do so we can all be less and less spectators and more actors.

I kiss you thus!

// from the action: Kissing the Prime Minister in the Mouth // Serralves, 21st April 2007.