Situated curating: an exercise in reading place

In the Master in Museology
Author: Beatriz Duarte
Invitation: Elisa Noronha (FLUP)
Location: Quinta de Santiago and Port of Leixões (Leça da Palmeira, Portugal)

March, 2026

spatial practices; mediation; embodied reading

This exercise was developed within a class focused on the relationship between curatorial practice and territory. The session began at Quinta de Santiago (Leça da Palmeira), with a short theoretical introduction, followed by a collective walk towards the Port of Leixões. Along this route, students were guided through a direct and embodied engagement with the site.

Designed as a foldable fanzine, the exercise invites participants to slow down, observe, and select a specific element of the site, staying with it over time. From this starting point, they are encouraged to map relationships, connecting human and more-than-human dimensions, and to reflect on the pre-existing images they hold about the place.

The exercise proposes a practice of attention and involvement: to remain with something, to trace its connections, and to explore ways of making it visible to others through objects, images, gestures, or narratives.

The outcomes are understood as partial and situated readings that reveal otherwise invisible layers of the territory, its infrastructures, relations, and flows.

In this sense, the exercise can be understood as a mediation device: it does not transmit fixed knowledge, but instead activates processes of listening, translation, and sharing, allowing each participant to construct their own relationship with the context.

Fotos de Beatriz Duarte