Porto Design Biennale can help us (re)define our lifetime

The second edition of Porto Design Biennale is themed “Alter-Realidades: Desenhar o Presente”, [“Alter-Realities: Drawing the Present”, free translation]. The programme features 49 activities, 9 curators, 11 workshops, 20 online talks and 24 hosting venues in Porto and in Matosinhos, from 2 July to 25 July.

The programme was presented today, at Porto City Hall Council Chambers and invites to a trip into design, “as a vehicle to create new ways of connecting with the city, empathise with the life around us, get closer to local manufacturing processes and embrace work and leisure in the standpoint of wellbeing”.

In the course of a first edition and second edition of the Porto Design Biennale, organised by the esad-idea, a pandemic happened to the world and everything had to be literally thought over, with new guidelines and objectives.

The presentation ceremony of Porto Design Biennale 2021 took place at the Porto City Hall Council Chambers, where Mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira enquired “if we really want to go back to what was, probably, an abnormality, or if this apnoea enabled us to look at the world and even to ourselves in a different manner”.

Rui Moreira also affirmed that “this is what a biennial is for”, it “creates a new and subsequent normality”. The Mayor of Porto furthered that the dimension that “this biennial encompasses reaches far beyond the product. It contemplates people, it aims at being disruptive, so that we can rethink everything we have been doing and what we can do in the future”.

In turn, the Mayor of Matosinhos, Luísa Salgueiro, enhanced the joint commitment by Porto and Matosinhos in organising the event, “in a year that would seem likely improbable, ensuring that “we do not want to leave design behind”.

“This is the moment to welcome our cultural expression, to strengthen and generate great added value, to build policies on the urban environment fabric, the circular economy, on product design, and also to think and disseminate, to internationalise to attract and appeal”, affirmed Luísa Salgueiro.

The Porto Design Biennale 2021 is curated by Alastair Fuad-Luke, and it will be held under the theme “Alter-Realidades: Desenhar o Presente”. The programme features exhibitions, conferences, workshops, publications, and other ways of sharing, and the starting point is the idea that “we are tired of multiple crisis - real, imagined or manipulated. The disenchantment prevents us from acting. But we need to rebuild worlds and create new ways of getting together, by dismissing unbearable hegemonies and fracturing ideologies. At present, with the pandemic and the crisis, design practice can help us find ways of living better”, affirmed Fuad-Luke.

The curator also advanced that this “will be a pluralist biennial, which will stir debate and positive action, inspired by four alternatives: “Alter-Paisagens”, “Alter-Cuidado”, “Alter-Produção” and “Alter-vivências”.

The kick-off of Porto Design Biennale happens with an exhibition and workshop by Alastair Fuad-Luke himself, themed “Museu da Matéria Viva”, set up at Quinta da Bonjóia.

The curator also enhanced the relevant question to be answered by the community: “How do you see the positive changes in the city?” This will also be the challenging motto to design schools and the number of projects submitted under the open call to satellite projects: 180 candidates, of 44 countries. “These are great numbers”, Fuad-Luke enthused.

Porto Design Biennale up North

Porto Design Biennale elected France as the invited country. This edition’s curator, Sam Baron admitted to “being very happy for the fact that it is the North of the country that celebrates design in Portugal and represents Portuguese design at international level. “I want to celebrate the perseverance to organise a biennial in such particular conditions, to say the least, as they are even complicated”, affirmed the French designer who has worked with such brands as Vista Alegre, Benetton or Dior.

Through the project "Autre/Outro", Sam Baron requested that both French and Portuguese artists, designers and thinkers develop a creative work, based on a set of objects collected in Porto.

The Director of esad-idea and Porto Design Biennale, Magda Seifert stated that “ever since the first biennale, the world changed and with it our ways of interacting with what surrounds us, at human level and beyond”.

"This is a Biennial that was borne out of the inescapable will of speculating on a new responsibility as regards producing, thinking, communicating and questioning, as well as on the role of design within our lifetime”.

The presentation was also attended by ESAD’s Director of the Executive Council, Sérgio Afonso, the council of Culture of the Municipality of Matosinhos, Fernando Rocha, the Director of the National Museum Soares dos Reis, António Ponte, and Nuno Faria, the artistic Director of the Museu da Cidade do Porto.

Porto Design Biennale 2021 full programme can be consulted here.