We created space to reclaim time … and that time made extra(ordinary) space

ABSTRACT

Within the concept of extra-space, this article aims to explore the meaning, relevance and consequences of the project HODO and the installation ‘The Resting Assembly’ as part of the official Portuguese student representation at the Prague Quadrennial 2023. In close relation to the cultural context of the project, the underlying ideas of time, space, and place are used to develop the methodological approaches, aims, intentions and decisions that guided the project. Based on these relationships, the article proposes to understand this project under the category of event which guides a way of thinking about scenographic contexts toward their amplification in contemporary practices, while furthering the theoretical dimension of the project. The article intends to describe how the idea that a specific (manifest expression of) time, its suspension or the act of pausing, is initiated by this project/object/performance as a form of agency and aesthetic reflection, contributing to an interrelation between time and space. In this sense, the project is studied as a space–time entity that can open up new possibilities in the Portuguese context of artistic creation and research in the field of scenography.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In fact, a previous space had to be opened for this project to happen. For eight years this idea accompanied, as a kind of subliminal mission, a group of scenographers who, whenever they could – in meetings, conferences, and formal and informal conversations – advocated to the Portuguese political authorities, and to its various representatives, for the pertinence of Portugal to be represented in the Student section as well as in the Countries and Regions. As a result of the insistence and consistency in reclaiming the implementation of this idea, but also the common recognition that APCEN, as a collective entity with a close relationship with education and independent of the choices for representation in the Countries and Regions, the Directorate-general for the Arts invited APCEN to curate the Student section, making the Portuguese official representation in 2023 the first shared by two curatorial teams and two curatorial projects.

2 For example, ‘rare’ might refer to something admirable, which therefore has a dazzling quality, inspiring step 1 of the project – Admirable Spaces; or something extraordinary, simply different from the ordinary, which can be unusual or exotic, inspiring step 2 – Extraordinary Times; or something unique, which there is shortage of or is scarce, inspiring step 3 – Unique Places.

3 This meant that they could produce a material or performative event, or both, in a way intended to bring that particular space to the viewer, embodying its reading or interpretation. But it also meant they could develop a proposal that allowed or amplified the admiration of that space in a site-specific way.

4 This appropriation, which allowed the participants to be integrated in a way that was adaptable to the diversity of their contexts, resulted in different statements in each participating school, thus allowing us to address the beginning of thought on these themes, as well as on the students' artistic approaches, rather than finding a final and closed materiality.

5 A position in this system is specified by three numbers, known as dimensions, that are usually called x, y, and z.

6 Spacetime is four-dimensional, meaning a position in spacetime requires four numbers to be specified: the three-dimensional location in space, plus the position in time, represented by a set of coordinates x, y, z and t. We can see a summary of this theme at https://www.livescience.com/space-time.html or https://www.britannica.com/science/space-time.

7 For instance, ‘the best-known analyses are those of the 20th-century English philosopher Bertrand Russell, for whom event replaced the vaguer notion of body, and the 20th-century English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, for whom events were formed by a nexus of actual occasions’ (see https://www.britannica.com/topic/event-occurrence). It is also not possible to ignore the importance it had for authors such as Jacques Derrida or Alain Badiou, but here we refer mostly to the mathematical event, as a result of the spacetime models.

8 In mathematical events it is not possible for an observer to be in motion relative to an event.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sara Franqueira

Sara Franqueira has a doctorate in Theater Studies (FLUL) a Master in Artistic Studies (FLUL) and a degree in Architecture (FAUTL). She develops research around the relations and contaminations between scenography and visual arts and the scenographic experience in contemporaneity and she currently teaches History and Theory of Performance Design, Aesthetics and Contemporary Art, both at ESTC (Lisbon´s Film &Theatre School) and has taught Contemporary Visual Culture and Scenic Space at ESTAL. She also develops artistic creation in the performing arts as a performance designer.

Inês de Carvalho

Inês de Carvalho works with Visões Úteis since 2009, in the areas of set designing and costumes, for Performance and Landscape Art projects. Since 2011 she also started directing projects, namely those involving communities. Since 2019, she became responsible for Artisitic Mediation and Creation as she assumed the direction of the Campanhã pole of the Expanding Culture Program. Master in Theatre Design by Slade School of Fine Arts in University College London.