ABSTRACT
What is chance? How is it defined? And what do the definitions say about who makes them? These are some initial questions to be given an arena in the Happenstance Shelter [Abrigo do Acaso] – artistic project. As chance is subordinated, in everyday life, to an event in simultaneous space and time that causes change in the expected sequence of previous events, this paper aims to reflect on the project options for the architectural and aesthetic reconstruction of a physical place (at Canada da Cortinha nº0, Carrazedo, Bragança, Portugal) in order to constitute the scenography of this Happenstance Shelter and by doing so, to lead us to think about our understanding of time and space.
In this sense, the body’s relationship with time and space – through memory, unpredictability, and transcendence – has been used as a bellwether to design an unexpected and unsettling atmosphere that interrogates the very existence of chance and the laws that govern life.
More than conclusions, at the end of the paper, the expectations raised by the project under development are explained, which result from giving rise to the individual subjectivity of future participants in their human attempt to map, understand, and explain these cuts of reality that they experience with intrigue and to which they give the name of chance.
