We have finally arrived at the third volume of the collection “lado B” [“side B”], a fruitful and necessary collaboration of the Doctoral Programme in Fine Arts with the Research Institute in Art, Design and Society (i2ADS).

In this new volume, the important Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum (who, like the previous authors, kindly gave his text to this collection) carries us, through two of its many texts, towards incredibly important questions to all those who care about practice and thought around the so-called contemporary art.

Unlike the previous ones, this volume privileges a condition, that is of the utmost importance for the Doctorate in Fine Arts as well as for i2ADS. These are texts written by an artist, and this condition alone would be decisive for the objectives of the collection. However, the dimension of this choice is stronger and wider. It embodies one of the most discussed questions in the field: what is the role to be played by artists in contemporaneity? What are the limits that they must impose? And, finally, what singularities may these texts, written from the inside out of the territory of artistic practice, bring? These are all open questions, but, also, because of that, enhancers of broader horizons with which we want to work and deal.

The texts that are now presented have also another important dimension in the, also, fundamental, contemporary discussions: they come from the southern hemisphere, they come from a country that still has open wounds that derive from its previous condition as a colony, but, above all, from a gaze that escapes the cultural centrality with which we are used to living. These are, after all, generic questions because the most important ones are posed by the artist in his texts. Straight away, the problem of participation and so-called participatory art and all the mistakes that it has generated over the past few decades. The in-depth and singular analysis that Ricardo presents to us is beyond any misunderstanding. He knows what he means when he talks about participatory art. He situates the problem based on a historical research that allows an understanding of the visible approximation in our days between the territory of art and the cultural industry. He rightly feels that this approach and, in some cases, almost fusion, takes refuge in myths and misunderstandings enhanced by a more than spent rhetoric of criticism of the individualism of the artists. Coming from the most profoundly individualistic sectors of society: neo-liberal theorists who present a kind of anarchism external to any collective cause, but which on an individual basis allows them to offer myriads of saving pos- sibilities (more now with the introduction of the digital siege and the self-proclaimed telework). From the advertisements with any tanned and well-nourished figure doing their job on a paradise beach to the extreme of what we already know as selfie-reality in which software for sharing allows us to touch up defects to appear perfect in front of others. He puts his finger on the wound when he raises the problems that are inherent to this condition of self-made man and the corresponding “participatory” possibility present in many works that claim this condition, forgetting that the symmetry between author and viewer is just another fallacy.