Weather Permitting / Se o clima for favorável / Si el tiempo lo permite: 9th Bienal do Mercosul
13 September–10 November 2013
Porto Alegre, Brazil
The title of the 9th Bienal do Mercosul | Porto Alegre, Weather Permitting in English, Se o clima for favorável in Portuguese, and Si el tiempo lo permite in Spanish, was proposed as a motto to suggest that different climates—atmospheric, emotional, and political—are at the core of the project. As much as weather can be a public concern (ecological and economical), it is also material substance (psychological and physical). Thus, such a common phrase is an invitation to ponder when and how, by whom and why, certain artworks and ideas have or lack physical or cultural visibility at a given moment in time. At the start of its planning, the curatorial promises put forth were to identify, propose, and repurpose changing belief systems and appraisals of experimentation and innovation, to encounter natural resources and material cultural in a new light, and to speculate on the grounds that have marked distinctions between discovery and invention. Its intent was, is, to raise ontological and technological questions through artistic practice, object making and nodes of experience.
This has given shape to the three main public initiatives of this Bienal: Portals, Forecasts and Monotypes, a multi-venue exhibition of contemporary art; Island Sessions, a discussion and publication series; and Cloud Formations, an arts pedagogy program. In the exhibition are historic and new works, as well as several historic artworks created after collaborative art commissions, including new projects ensuing from Imagination Machines, developed in partnership with artists, companies, research centers and communities in Brazil. In singular and interrelated ways, these initiatives conceptually focus on the interaction between nature and culture, and the ways in which visual artists address unknown, unpredictable and seemingly uncontrollable phenomenon. They consider the natural causes and effects that propel human travel and social displacement, technological advancement and world development, vertical expansions in space and transversal explorations through time.
Curatorial Team
Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy is the artistic director and chief curator of the 9th Bienal do Mercosul | Porto Alegre. The curatorial team includes Mônica Hoff, ground curator and head of Cloud Formations; Raimundas Malašauskas, time curator; Bernardo de Souza, space curator; and curatorial cloud fellows Sarah Demeuse, Daniela Pérez, Júlia Rebouças, and Dominic Willsdon. Luiza Proença is the editorial coordinator.
Organizer
Created in 1996, the Fundação Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul is a private, non-profit organization in Brazil with a mission to develop cultural and educational projects in the field of visual arts, encouraging dialogues between contemporary artists and communities.
Sponsors and supporters
Ministry of Culture / Federal Government – Realization
Pró-Cultura RS / Secretaria do Estado da Cultura do Rio Grande do Sul
Governo do Rio Grande do Sul – Funding
Petrobras and Gerdau – Master Sponsor
Itaú – Education Program Sponsor
IBM – Smarter Sponsor
Santander – Sponsor of the Portals, Forecasts and Monotypes
Oi – Matinês Sponsor
CEEE – Cloud Formations 9th Bienal do Mercosul | Porto Alegre Sponsor
Petrobras – Sponsor of the 9th Bienal do Mercosul | Porto Alegre school transport
Celulose Irani and Gerdau – Sponsor Gold of the Program Committee
Petrobras – Sponsor Silver of the Program Committee
Grupo RBS, Lojas Pompéia, Vonpar, Lojas Renner, Évora and Braskem – Support of the Education Program
Timac Agro – Diamond Incentive for the Education Program
Triunfo Concepa – Platinum Incentive for the Education Program
Oi Futuro, Canal Futura, Fundação Gaúcha de Bancos Sociais, Prefeitura de Porto Alegre, PUCRS, Aliança Francesa, Institut Français, Latitude, Centro Cultural CEEE Erico Verissimo, Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul Ado Malagoli – MARGS, Memorial do Rio Grande do Sul, Santander Cultural and Usina do Gasômetro – Institutional Support
For more information, please contact:
Ariela Dedigo – Press Office
imprensa [at] bienalmercosul.art.br / T +55 51 3254 7500