Catalogue > At random

That one is able to speak does not mean that one has a voice. In Voices, Miguel Peres do Santos constructs a comparison between the collective consciousness and a censored archive. Just like in our own lives, we “choose” to keep what we do not want to remember as far from our consciousness as we unconsciously can; the same method we apply on public archival material that we would rather not be confronted with as a societal whole. At the television archive of Beeld and Geluid, Miguel Peres dos Santos and Sharelly Emanuelson found a significant amount of footage relating to migration from the public television memory of the Netherlands. In it, the essence of the Dutch relation to the alleged “other” can be viewed. In Voices Peres dos Santos uses this material to try to find out if the perceived voiceless were really silent, and if those who do not have a voice today are only mute to the ones who refuse to listen.

Miguel Peres dos Santos (Lisboa, 1976) is an independent artistic researcher graduated in his MA in 2012 from the Royal University of the Arts in The Hague, The Netherlands. His work is frequently screened in The Netherlands, but also in Belgium, France, Denmark, Norway, Portugal and the U.S. He lectured in 2012 for the University College Leiden, and is a policy advisor for Foundation Focus. He currently lives and works in The Hague.