Electra Magazine 12 | Fundação EDP

Electra Magazine 12

Editor
Fundação EDP
Year
2021
On November 2011, a space rover was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, destined for Mars. The rover’s mission consisted of planetary exploration and scientific research, and it was given the name “Curiosity”. The decision to choose this name for a device that was leaving the earth in search of the unknown and to answer questions about the universe was a celebratory act of the longevity of Curiosity, thus updating a history that proves more complex and less stable than it might seem at first.
Curiosity is the theme of the dossier of the new issue of Electra magazine. A series of texts bringing together issues relating to science, art, philosophy and religion outline the history of Curiosity, its variations and changes, seeking to understand it as an essential foundation of modernity.
A featured piece in issue 12 of Electra is the worldwide pre-publication of a chapter from the biography of Fernando Pessoa, written over the last few years by Richard Zenith, one of the greatest world experts on the poet, and whose English edition will be launched in the summer of this year, while the Portuguese edition will be published in the Autumn. This pre-publication of a chapter from Pessoa: A Biography serves as an announcement of a work that will henceforth become essential to scholars and readers of Pessoa.
This edition includes a rare interview with film director Pedro Costa: a journey through his work and everything it entails. Pedro Costa imbues what he does with the same personal and unique reflection that is presented in his internationally acclaimed work.
This edition goes on talking about cinema by tracing the profile of film director Joaquim Pinto; Afonso Ramos writes about “speculation”; American historian Bradley W. Hart sketches a portrait of the 1920s, a dangerous and fascinating decade which “never saw a return to normality”; there are two texts published about Lisbon, one written by Nélio Conceição (images and representations of the city) and another by Nuno Fonseca (the soundscape); musician and author Adolfo Luxúria Canibal writes about Paris, mixing his own memory with that of others; João Constâncio comments on a quote by Henry de Montherlant, showing how it can be interpreted today in light of the “unreason” pervading present times; South-Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son writes about the world’s present and past, in a journal intersected by the pandemic; and this edition’s portfolio is authored by Austrian artist Heimo Zobernig