April 1st, 2020 would celebrate the launch of the third edition of SP-Arte Magazine, completing one year since its launch on the 15th anniversary of the Fair in 2019. For the new magazine, we chose to work on the concept of crisis, not from the angle of those who face it now, but from the work that has emerged in it (whether personal, political, environmental). Our new issue was, therefore, a reminder: crises pass or transform and any work produced during turbulence, resists. The title of the editorial was What was left, of everything we’ve been through.

A few weeks before the opening of the Fair, we faced its suspension for public health reasons. Along with the event, there was also the interruption of everything that goes with it: the magazine, the parallel programming, the support materials, the educational itineraries… a series of cultural productions that are now on hold so they can soon reemerge in more calm. And the editorial, written at a time when “certainty” was a word that still belonged to our vocabulary, got stuck in the pages of a print proof, a small portrait of the hopeful vision that we had during January 2020.

Now, we have chosen to publish the magazine in its virtual version.

In order to make this happen in the best possible way, our talented design team translated the physical design proposals into the online version, recreating the experience of reading these texts and absorbing their images.

We also invited authors and curators to participate in the Reading Cycle, in which we will collectively debate the essays and recontextualize them for the moment experienced. Each text will be released at the beginning of the week on our website. At the end of the same week, through a live on SP-Arte’s Instagram channel, I will meet with you readers and the author of the text read, to discuss the topics of the article. We hope that, with this cycle, we will be able to engage directly with our community of readers, and together start a dialogue around these texts and recreate new possibilities of reading.

The editorial of the physical magazine ended like this: “Danger, difficulty, revolution, circumstance. Momentum. Concepts that try to unravel what we understand by crisis as we expand our dialogue on the subject. It is important, therefore, to occasionally stop and observe the badges of past battles – reminders of battles fought by those who preceded us in our struggles, and which remain in the present as messages from the past. And thus, we go on”.

For this new editorial, I feel that, in addition to holding firmly to past messages that this too shall pass, we may need to understand our actions now from the perspective of what they will be one day: our own messages for the future.