Comunoteca
Biblioteca Municipal Pedro Ivo, Porto
(Happisodes)
Shared library, meeting point, collective space for reflection, organization, struggle — but also rest. This is the Comunoteca, a Public Program within the Porto Design Biennale: a place to think not only about what design is, but about how we live, work, and resist within and beyond it.
From performative readings on women typographers made invisible in mainstream history to debates on wages, contracts and unions, Comunoteca insists on looking at design as a field of labour — marked by exploitation but also by the invention of alternatives. Work is always unfolded as practice, livelihood, and struggle. The same goes for time: precarious, fragmented, ruled by impossible deadlines, yet also reinvented through other cosmologies and practices.
Open assemblies, cooperative networks, and kinship libraries underline the insistence on the collective as method. Instead of competition, Comunoteca proposes friendship; against isolation, it builds support structures. Just as central is the role of memory and counter-history. At the centre of it all is care as a political foundation, understood as the basis for another kind of creative economy — one that values rest, affection and solidarity.
28.10. - 15.11.2025
Biblioteca Popular Pedro Ivo
Praça do Marquês, Porto
Public Programme
Free entry
Tuesday
28 OUT, 6:30 p.m.
ORALITURA (PT)
Papel Commum: Trabalho, Tempo e Seus Desvios
Joana & Mariana
Wednesday
29 OUT, 6:30 p.m.
APRENDÍCIO (PT)
Como Encontrar Estabilidade Num Mundo Instável?
Sofia Rocha e Silva
Thursday
30 OUT, 6:30 p.m.
ASSEMBLEIA (PT)
Faturas para Pagar e Viver
Estruturas de Apoio
Sexta-feira
31 OUT, 6:30 p.m.
PARTILHA (EN)
Building Cooperative Futures
Gemma Copeland
Saturday
1 NOV, 2 p.m.
ENCONTROS (EN)
2 p.m.
Living Worse Than Our Parents
Azahara Palomeque
3 p.m.
Struggle as Method: Excavating the Inside of Practice
Raya Leary
4 p.m.
Everything I Think About When I Work
Benedetta Crippa
5 p.m.
DJ Set Caliente Isa
Tuesday
4 NOV, 6:30 p.m.
ORALITURA (PT)
Um Mundo Ch’ixi É Possível: Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui
Mexerica Utópica
Wednesday
5 NOV, 6:30 p.m.
APRENDÍCIO (PT)
Como Montar Um Sindicato?
SINTARQ
Thursday
6 NOV, 6:30 p.m.
ASSEMBLEIA (PT)
Tempo para Fazer e Lazer
Estruturas de Apoio
Friday
7 NOV, 6:30 p.m.
PARTILHA (EN)
Comradeship in Slo-mo: Slowness & Pleasure
Sarah Diedro Jordão
Saturday
8 NOV, 14h00 / 2 p.m.
ENCONTROS (PT-EN)
2 p.m.
O Arquivo Está Vivo: Museologia Cuir Lésbica Negra
Geanine Vargas Escobar
3 p.m.
Libraries of Kinship: Overlooked Stories From the Margins
Afaina de Jong
4 p.m.
Design Diss: No Hustle, No Grind, Rest as Resistance
Cherry-Ann Morgan
5 p.m.
DJ PatiSol
Tuesday
11 NOV, 6:30 p.m.
ORALITURA (PT)
O Voo Surpresa das Águas-vivas: Uma Repentina
Gabriela do Amaral
Wednesday
12 NOV, 6:30 p.m.
APRENDÍCIOS (EN)
Radical Rituals: The Mundane and The Extraordinary
Studio forty five degrees
Thursday
13 NOV, 6:30 p.m.
ASSEMBLEIA (PT)
Afetos para Unir e Resistir
Estruturas de Apoio
Friday
14 NOV, 6:30 p.m.
PARTILHA (EN)
Escape Time: An Atemporal Event
Helga Schmid
Saturday
15 NOV, 2 p.m.
ENCONTROS (PT-EN)
2 p.m.
DJ Set Ece Canlı
3 p.m.
Wondering about Time(s)
Ren Britton
4 p.m.
Once Upon a No: Storytelling for a Million Possible Yeses
Franca López Barbera
5 p.m.
The Library Beneath the Screen
Noam Youngrak Son
Speakers
Afaina de Jong
Azahara Palomeque
Benedetta Crippa
Cherry-Ann Morgan
DJ Caliente Isa
DJ PatiSol
Estruturas de Apoio (Francisca Monteiro, Isabel Duarte, Susana Carvalho)
Ece Canli
Ffanca López Barbera
Gabriela do Amaral
Geanine Vargas Escobar
Gemma Copeland
Helga Schmid
Joana & Mariana
Mexerica Utópica
Noam Youngrak Son
Raya Leary
Ren Britton
Sarah Diedro Jordão
SINTARQ
Sofia Rocha e Silva
Studio Forty Five Degrees
Nina Paim is a designer, curator, and editor-turned-publisher, whose work revolves around notions of community. She has studied across a variety of institutions, from Esdi in Brazil to the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in the Netherlands and the Hochschule der Künste Bern in Switzerland. These programmes made her acutely aware of people’s lived experiences and individual perspectives, which inform her practice.
Nina has taught in many esteemed institutions, such as her alma mater in the Netherlands and the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). In 2014, she designed and curated Taking a Line for a Walk, an exhibition at the 26th International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno, for which she was later awarded a Swiss Design Award. Her other curatorial projects include Feminist Findings (2020, Berlin) and the Etceteras Feminist Festival of Publishing and Design (2023, Porto).
In 2019, Nina co-founded the feminist platform Futuress.org, which she co-directed until 2023 when she founded Bikini Books, an independent feminist publisher for design based in Porto, Portugal.
Core Programme
Happisodes
Promoted by the Porto Design Biennale, Happisodes are co-design projects between designers, communities, and municipalities that bring to life, in Porto and Matosinhos, the joy of collectively recognising that the present can be reimagined. They are living, inhabited processes where design gives shape to the common.
Publications
Book publishing is a fundamental part of the Porto Design Bienniale, conveying, through the editing and materiality of the books and catalogues, the concept and curation of the projects.
Constellations
The selected projects are independent and autonomous projects regarding curation, financing and production that engage with the theme of this edition.