CAÇA-PALAVRAS - Caçar, Semear, Escalar e Falar OS ESPACIALISTAS
Beja, September 30th 2025, 10h - 18h
Where Futurama - Espaço de Artes e Conhecimento
Free entry
For Os Espacialistas, words fly over images, feed on them, and nest within them.
Images are nourishment, words are their nutrients, and spaces are the soil where they are sown, harvested, and collected.
In this game-shaped project, Os Espacialistas, together with students from the Game Management – Hunting, Agriculture and Nature course at ALSUD Vocational School in Mértola, set out into the spaces of their excavations, seedings, hunts, and curatorships, to learn how their practices of conservation and regeneration of plant and animal species are also forms of human rehabilitation and sustainable imagination — from origin in the form of words to the projection and construction of real and imagined food shelters, capable of fulfilling that role.
Armed as pro/curators of words, images, and spaces, and as protectors of real and imaginary biodiversity, they spent several days thinking through actions such as digging, ploughing, sowing, caring, scaring, harvesting, catching, capturing, and sharing, exploring how imagination, as a pedagogy of all re/connections, allows for the creation of new meanings and new ways of living.
Os Espacialistas transformed the village of Mértola into an open-air agricultural hunting ground, where words, images, and spaces roamed wild and free — the only prey being living things captured cinegetically through perception and thought.
The photographic result of this project, developed during an artistic residency at the latest edition of the Futurama Festival (2024), is presented in a new exhibition device: a scalable image structure, composed of ladder-sculptures built to human scale, offering both real and imagined access to the photographic sketches created.
In parallel, visitors are invited to speak to one another in a very special way — through a playful Espacialista device that creates winged words, capable of scaling forms of dialogue and play.
Fully aware that to inhabit is to converse, Os Espacialistas propose the creation of a shared “e-vent” of word invention — a collective act of imagining language.
Biography
Os Espacialistas is a laboratory project dedicated to the theoretical and practical investigation of the connections between art and architecture. With their bodies, they explore spatial relationships, transfiguration and metamorphosis of space in a continuous process of re-signification made possible by this dialogue. They replace the pencil with the photographic camera, using it as a tool for drawing, thinking, perceiving, and diagnosing both natural and built space. Their actions are guided by the Espacialista's Diary and supported by the “Portable Espacialista Kit” they carry with them. Their work encompasses architectural projects, photography exhibitions, videos, installations, stage design, performances, literary collaborations, photographic illustrations, workshops, seminars, and publications. A noteworthy aspect of their practice is their ongoing collaboration with writer Gonçalo M. Tavares, which has resulted in books, performances, workshops, and lectures.
Their work has been presented in a wide variety of venues and contexts, including the Museu da Electricidade, Galeria Lagar de Azeite, Galeria de Arte Contemporânea Paulo Amaro, Ordem dos Arquitectos – OASRS, Lisbon International Art Fair, Laboratório de Actividades Criativas, Centro Cultural das Caldas da Rainha, Centro Cultural de Belém, Coreto do Jardim da Estrela, Jardim da Torre de Belém, Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa, Centro Nacional de Cultura, Auditório dos Oceanos, Teatro da Trindade, Faculty of Fine Arts of Porto, Teatro do Campo Alegre, Teatro São Luís, Red Bull House of Art, Circuito Aberto de Arte Pública de Paredes, Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto – FAUP, 17th Vila Nova de Cerveira Biennial, in the book Atlas of the Body and the Imagination by Gonçalo M. Tavares, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Fábrica da Moagem de Tomar, Espaço Mira Gallery in Porto, Palácio do Marquês in Oeiras, the “LAR – Laboratory of Art and Architecture” at Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa, the Espacialista Store at Centro Cultural de Belém, Madrid Book Fair, the Chicago Architecture Biennial with Aires Mateus, Univates in Brazil, the European Wine City in Torres Vedras / Alenquer, MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon, MAM – Maia Architecture Month, BoCA – Biennial of Contemporary Arts (Lisbon, Porto, Braga, Águeda, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires), Museu Coleção Berardo, Museo del Crudo in Italy, the RTP2 series Atelier d’Arquitectura, Colégio das Artes at the University of Coimbra, Musex in Algés (Portugal), the Concéntrico 09 Festival in Logroño (Spain), the Vila Franca de Xira Photography Biennial, and the MAC/CCB square (2024/2025).
