My good friend Hugo Seabra sent me this photo of the Portuguese edition of A Restless Art at the Lisbon Book Fair. It is he, with Isabel Lucena, his erstwhile colleague at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, that I have to thank for the chance to write and publish this book, and I’m glad to do it again, especially to Isabel for the impeccably sensitive Portuguese translation of A Restless Art.
For many years, I have argued that trust is vital in community art and that the best way to make someone trustworthy is to trust them. As Seneca writes in his Third Letter to Lucilius:
Regard [someone] as loyal, and you will make him loyal.
Seneca. Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium, translated by Robin Campbell, Penguin Classics.
My working life has been shaped by a succession of people who trusted me when there was little or no reason to do so, inspiring me to do all I could to show that I deserved their faith. I have no doubt that the world would be immeasurably better if the powerful showed a willingness to trust citizens a little, instead of citizens being always asked to trust their rulers, who are generally the exception to Seneca’s rule.
Hugo’s photo made me realise that it’s seven years since A Restless Art was published. It has been a dark time, for the world, and for me, and that has shaped A Selfless Art, not because that book is gloomy but because I must think and work differently in changed circumstances. I had worried about publishing another book so soon after the last one – I’m not a very productive writer – but I shall be happy if A Selfless Art is available for the 10th anniversary of its predecessor, in 2029. In the meantime, A Restless Art can always be downloaded here.
François Matarasso 
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