The present continuous is a verb tense that combines the present with a sense of continuity. Taking this as its cue, PRESENT CONTINUOUS is a travelling exhibition that brings together projects from the latest edition of the Ibero-American Design Biennial (BID’24) and the theme of the current Porto Design Biennale. From the outset, it represents a formal gesture marking the meeting of two events that share common concerns and outline a new form of collaboration here.
 
The projects presented at BID’24 highlight the collective dimension in its ecological, humanist and political, relational and emotional, public and poetic breadth. They represent interventions that, for the most part, involve groups, movements or associations. Many arise from participatory experiences and involve co-creation strategies. They reflect on and act within territory, considering the people who inhabit it, the nature that shapes it, and the issues it reveals. By bringing them into this time and place, we hope to expand their reach and contribute to their continuity and generative potential.
 
PRESENT CONTINUOUS is organised into three sections: CAUSES brings together projects built around a specific idea, value or phenomenon, from the climate emergency to the role of art in community transformation; COMMUNITIES gathers unifying experiences centred on sociocultural projects; and THINGS focuses on objects that, by rejecting extractivist logics, forge new relationships of meaning. More than separating them into necessarily porous categories, used here simply for clarity, what matters is to celebrate encounter, highlight the common, and resist together.