MODOS Art Journal. Editors: Marize Malta (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro); Maria João Neto (Universidade de Lisboa)

Key, traditional readings of objects (practical, poetic, everyday, artistic, banal, exceptional) consider them inert, with little analysis of their movements, their actions in space and time, their actions in the world, especially in the field of art history. But we may think that the condition of immobility is a temporary situation and the fate of many objects is to wander. There are numerous unquiet objects, as there are multiple types of unquietness in objects. Some, emerging from their inertia, assume a disorderly and unpredictable logic to their action, adopting a particular identity. There are some who, faced with their startled poetic power, leave us astonished, with a restless mind, unable to remain passive, making us see, hear, feel in an unusual way. Others urge us to review paradigms, knowledge, data and dated visualities. Some make us move with them or at least cause us to move by circling them, penetrati ng them, experiencing them. Some urge us to move to as yet unexplored destinations, making our bodies need to undertake new postures. Certain objects were destined for several stops, reinventing themselves in each occupied place and impacting on the shape of the place, as if they could never settle in certain situations. This may also occur in classificatory frameworks where labels cannot account for the multifaceted and ambiguous nature of the unquiet objects. Their unquietness also implies that they remain enigmas, making it difficult to decipher what they withhold and do not say, escaping our questions, or remaining transitory or metamorphic that, by their propensity to change place and appearance constantly, hinders our ability to notice them in their variant states.

The provocation of the dossier is to invoke objects that contain various art histories, from their biographies (or autobiographies), their paths and performances, narrating their disquiet. Unquiet objects involve agitated looks which, in turn, demand shaken insights and await narratives in unrest.