THE INTRUDER, drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy, María Zambrano, and my own autobiography. This video essay stems from a research process initiated by a heart surgery I underwent in 2011. In 2013, I returned to the hospital — not only to revisit a space, but to re-encounter a temporality inscribed in its architecture, gestures, and voices. I spoke again with the surgeon, nurses, and assistants, retracing corridors, elevators, consultation rooms, and the operating theatre — documenting the space while attempting to grasp an emotional experience.

In 2024, an invitation to participate in an exhibition on “Healing” brought me back to this project, now shaped by more than a decade of lived transformation. Since the surgery, I have carried a mechanical valve in my chest — its ticking a constant reminder that healing is not a fixed state, but something unresolved and continuously negotiated through the body.

Over these years, life unfolded alongside this device: births and losses, artistic work, teaching, and a growing archive of images — thousands accumulating into a dense, restless, and unfinished body of work.

The title is inspired by The Intruder by Jean-Luc Nancy, whose reflections on bodily identity, estrangement, and intimacy resonated deeply with my own experience. I was also guided by María Zambrano, particularly “The Metaphor of the Heart”, where the heart emerges as both organ and symbol.

This project evolved into a kind of atlas — a constellation of images that extends beyond the hospital to include materials from my artistic practice, personal archive, and what I call emotional images. Rather than a linear narrative, the video juxtaposes fragments — clinical, intimate, artistic — through layered images and a dialogical voice, unfolding to the rhythm of a heartbeat.

This video essay reflects on memory, body, and time as intertwined dimensions of artistic and existential inquiry. Healing emerges not as a return, but as an ongoing reconfiguration of presence — measured by the mechanical ticking in my chest, both biological rhythm and philosophical metronome.

THE INTUDER 4K 

Dolby 5.1

15 min 

2026

Directed, written and edited : João Paulo Serafim

Voices: Joana Craveiro e João Paulo Serafim

Music: Arutani, “Elsewhere” 

Text adaptation: “ A Secreta Vida do Coração” de Maria Zambrano

Post-production: Vitor Carvalho

Sound post-production: João Alves

Design: Camila Serafim

Translation: Joana Rocha e Cunha

Production: Museu Improvável

Production support: Midnight Express

Creation support: Associação P28