2015 » Portugal » Performing Space

ID (Entity) Box – By the Book or By the Space

This project is a part of the Portuguese curatorial project that has proposed identity as a construction linked to its revelation and vice versa. Similarly, the categories of live events that we have proposed seem to result from a compromise between the event and its built environment. It is created at the same instance that is revealed, it is interdependent and always local, sharing with identity a sense of place that is not transferred onto another site, that is not rewritten. Spatial/temporal actions can be disputed forms of using space to create meaning or identity.

The project consists of a presentation entitled By the Book or By the Space: a “conferenceless” meeting in a classic space (a lecture room) that, like a guided tour, invites the audience to think about that space while developing a series of physical manifestations. Using objects, images, actions and other teasers to break down the language typical for that kind of space: how can we stretch this model to include a hybrid format, that can be like a guided tour in the sense that the materiality being presented is transformed by speech? What changes when we change the things we are looking for even if we are listening to the same discourse? Could scenography be a way of producing identity? A kind of performative conference connected more strongly with the visual experience than with the auditory process with which it is usually associated.

The other event is a guided tour entitled By the Book or By the Space: a “guideless” tour, an experience more similar to a real talk, like a presentation of ideas, an experience where the route is not the ultimate purpose but the development of blocks of thoughts planted in different aspects of the same space. It is an interior guide tour at the Clam-Gallas Palace, inside the particularities of one interior space and the meeting of an interior person. It is not about that space in particular but about how we can use it to create an experience of words, a form of identity involving all the senses, and an invitation to discover minor architectural features in dialogue with concepts. A performative guided tour that does not guide the visitors but offers an experience of possible reality recreation.