Curated by Virgílio Ferreira

Each era can be characterised by the way collective expectations and fears are managed. The way has been paved over the past fifty years for a society of communication. Concerns related to environmental and ecological changes emerged at the start of that time. Today, the issue is already posed in terms of imminent risk, in a context of emergency that, according to Donna Haraway, can be summarised by the question: How to live better on a vulnerable planet that is not yet dead?

Adaptation and Transition is an exhibition arising from the artistic creation programme developed under the scope of the Ci.CLO Bienal de Fotografia do Porto. The curatorial proposal aims to contribute to the social-ecological debate backed by the urgency to develop new forms of human-nature relationships that support the stability of the environment and biodiversity.

How can artistic mobilisations like this function in this time of great contradiction? We are challenging the emerging need for policies and actions that question global governance structures which continue to promote ecologically unsustainable strategies. How can we diagnose this "crisis of our time" beyond the pessimism that has marked this state of global passivity? What is the "response-ability" we want to encourage in this emergency context?

New balanced negotiations between species need to be developed in order to continue on this evolutionary path of Adaptation. It is urgent to implement more effective strategies of social and environmental renewal in this process of Transition. These tasks involve us all, and require the re-imagining of other collaborative models and support perceptual re-orientations to open up to other forms of feeling, so that different lines of action can be constructed in a space of convergence and understanding, which respects all forms of life.

This group of artists with different backgrounds shows us different perspectives in addressing ecological issues, whether spiritual, social or political. The various site-specific installations distributed throughout the gardens and the Carlos Alberto chapel are intertwined and involve photography, sound and video, with diverse objects and plants. They form a rhizomatic aesthetic field of figures adapted and in transition. The experience is not meant to be ideal or definitive, but only an invitation to establish other levels of interconnectivity, new possibilities of meaning that naturally remain open.


JARDINS PALÁCIO DE CRISTAL

Rua de D. Manuel II, 4050-346 Porto

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Every day 8 a.m. - 9 p.m.