PORTUGAL curator: APCEN (Portuguese Association of Scenography)

PQ23 STUDENT SECTION // RARE Stories of Unique Places

HODO: Unique Journeys

[hodós = road, path, travel]

In a time of globalization and progressive acceleration of personal and professional dynamics, opportunities to
(physically) experience spaces and moments are increasingly scarce. With the pandemic, ways of making, living and
connecting we always took for granted have altered. The consummation of encounter as we have known it since
ancient times has now become rare.

In the expanded world of scenography and design for performance, the PQ is the most consensual place of
experiencing and exchanging knowledge and artistic practice, in unpredictable and unique encounters. The
Portuguese Students’ participation, culminating in 10 rare days in Prague, encloses an enriching learning process
conveyed through a proximity to contexts, concepts and people that otherwise would hardly have a place in the
scope of their curriculum. They will engage in a project that privileges a more processual dimension as opposed to a
final-object-centred work. The possibility of creation as result of a series of shared moments, in which the final object
is effectively the consequence of ongoing and shared thought, is quite unique in the scale of our national territory.
HODO is therefore a rare project - its configuration translates a commitment to the reflexive practice we intend to
activate with our students and make space to flow, consciously and insightfully, driven by the process’ resulting
connections. To that extent, the final object (the exhibit to be installed in Prague) and its specifications (expressive
medium, materiality, components) will result directly from this process, thus will not be defined in advance.

Still rare, even in contemporary higher education, is to find space, guidance and encouragement to problematize
scenography as an expanded field of work, potentialized in its disciplinary crossings, such as curatorship, museology
and publication, towards recognizing and instigating more conceptual, abstract and relational dimensions. So, as a
response to the PQ23 artistic call – an invitation for rare and transformative acts in scenographic practice, APCEN’s
curators devised HODO: Unique Journeys, with the purpose of leading to Prague a group of students,
representative of design education in Portugal, while guiding them in their experience of a long, enriching and rare
journey where they are summoned as travellers and performers, as makers of their own path – their hodo.

Before Prague, HODO unfolds in various locations in Portugal, taking off from the spirit of the place (genius locci),
and developing through its artistic conceptualization, coming to a final form in its unique manifestation at the PQ. This
progression is also intended in terms of scale: (1) it begins in the familiar space of the Portuguese schools, among
everyday peers; (2) involves active partnerships between peers from different schools, located in different regions of
the country; (3) concludes with the formation of a final group that, by representing the institutions involved, legitimizes
as a national representation, calling upon themselves a curatorial role, thus authoring their presence and action.

The concept of “rare” and the processual inclination of the project leads to a 3-step HODO journey as a methodology
for the curatorial proposal:
step 1: ADMIRABLE SPACES - students from participant schools choose spaces simultaneously local and
“admirable”, focusing on relating the act of admiring / gazing and the act of capturing / reading real spaces.
Following this exploratory activity, they are invited to conceptualize and design that space / place.
step 2: EXTRAORDINARY TIMES - selected students from different participant schools group up in theatres and
cultural centres for regional residencies (“staged” in the north, centre and south). With renewed awareness
that the concept of time is closely linked to that of space, this step intends to make room for an extraordinary
time, outside the school and curricular constraints, to develop work that results from meeting and connecting
with their peers and professional artists and curators.
step 3: UNIQUE PLACES - selected as delegates of HODO to finalize the curatorial project in Prague, a group of
student joins APCEN’s curatorial team for a final residency, with the purpose of designing and preparing the
materialization of HODO: Unique Journeys for the Student Section, thus carrying with them the ballast of the
collective experience of successive encounters, connections and decisions, condensed in a form that
emanates what is rare, local and unique to the global audience and shared space of the Prague Quadrennial.

pq23students.apcen@gmail.com || www.apcen.pt || facebook.com/apcenografia || www.instagram.com/ap.cenografia