From 16 May to 2 July, the city of Porto will host the first edition of Ci.CLO Bienal Fotografia do Porto. The Bienal supports innovative approaches to visual representation that contribute to a greater critical awareness of the ecological and social vulnerabilities we face. Ci.CLO develops a continuous research and experimentation in collaboration with artists, questioning its own methodologies and proposing narratives, both utopian and dystopian, motivated by cultural and environmental changes.

ADAPTATION AND TRANSITION, the title of the first Ci.CLO Bienal Fotografia do Porto, suggests a dialogic relationship marked by social and environmental crisis. Each era can be characterised in how collective expectations and fears are managed. History tells us that attempts to react are based on scientific and technological development, together with an appeal for awareness, rational thinking and greater spirituality. Concerns related to environmental and ecological changes has emerged in the last 50 years. Narratives surrounding conflicts between culture and nature, which determine our survival and stability on the planet, have gained increasingly more space and consistency. This century is at a critical point. Survival is discussed in terms of imminent risk and emergency.

How can artistic mobilisations function in this time of great contradiction? There is a need to critique global governance that continues to promote ecologically unsustainable strategies. How can we diagnose this "crisis of our time" beyond the pessimism that has created a state of global passivity? What is the "response-ability" we want to encourage?

Under the artistic direction of Virgílio Ferreira, the Bienal is supported by Direcção Geral das Artes and Porto Municipality as well as international reference partners such as the Europa-Ásia Foundation and Triennial of Photography Hamburg.

Ci.CLO Bienal offers a program of nuclear expositions and satellite projects with works by 53 national and international artists is exhibited in 16 historical, cultural and artistic institutions throughout the city of Porto. Along with the artists, 11 curators were invited to develop mostly unpublished projects by national and international artists: Virgílio Ferreira, Krzysztof Candrowicz, Diogo Bento, Eduarda Neves, António Rodrigues, Miguel Paiva, Luísa Fragoso, Susana Lourenço Marques, José Maia, Pedro Leão Neto, and Pablo Berástegui Lozano.

Virgílio Ferreira is the curator of Adaptation and Transition, an exhibition arising from the artistic creation programme developed under the scope of the Ci.CLO Bienal de Fotografia do Porto. The artists were challenged to create new projects specifically for the Palácio de Cristal gardens. 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. 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.

Krzysztof Candrowicz, artistic director of the Triennial of Photography Hamburg, has curated the exhibition Stories on Earthly Survival at Centro de Português de Fotografia. The exhibition gathers seven international artists, including UK’s Mandy Barker who will present Soup, Sand, Beyond Drifting: Imperfectly Known Animals, a dialogue between photography and scientific research that explores the problem of plastic waste in the oceans.

Curated by José Maia, the Mira Forum will exhibit o exílio da paisagem, where Chana de Moura and Dinis Santos, artists selected at Ci.CLO Open Call, will present works produced and designed exclusively for the Ci.CLO Bienal'19.

Jayne Dyer, artist, art critic and Australian academic, who has worked on issues such as the identity, waste and (dis)functionality of urban and natural environments, will exhibit This Savage Garden, an artistic intervention in five locations of Jardins do Palácio de Cristal.