Rui 
Mourão, an international artist based in Lisbon is visiting London. His art work raises important questions about the relations between the individual and the collective, the private and the public, the self and the other. Significantly, how these impact upon notions of freedom, justice, identity, power, knowledge, art and meaning in contemporary society and culture. Ideas that lie at the heart of his practice, which in its interesting last works embraced a form of artivism. Rui Mourão – who is also the author of a book called An Essay on Artivism – Video and Performance – created a series of artivist performances, counting with the collaboration of dozens of people, meant to stand up for a more democratic access to art, museums and culture. ACT I consisted of the peaceful and collective occupation of the National Museum of Contemporary Art – Chiado Museum, in Lisbon, during the night following the opening of his exhibition called OUR DREAMS DON’T FIT IN THEIR BALLOT BOXES. ACT II – YOUR DREAMS DON’T FIT IN OUR BALLOT BOXES consisted of 73 people enacting an artivist happening with tableaux vivants in the National Museum of Ancient Art. ACT III – BALLOT BOXES WHERE DREAMS DON’T FIT SLOWLY DIE took place at the Aiuda National Palace, with dozens of people reading poetry out loud, other performers masquerading in suits and ties and pig-head masks, and a drone flying over the scene in front of the door of the State Secretary of Culture. i’klectik is glad to present the video works that Rui Mourão has created out of those performances, in an unusual crossing between art, civic participation and visual anthropology.
