The 9th Mercosul Biennial | Porto Alegre will be held from September 13 to November 10, 2013, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. It consists of a contemporary art exhibition, which includes performances and events, presented at various locations throughout the city. The 9th Biennial's educational project, Training Networks, begins on May 17, 2013, along with a special series of public programs and film screenings. The 9th Biennial is organized by the Mercosul Visual Arts Biennial Foundation, a non-profit organization in Porto Alegre with the mission of developing educational and cultural visual arts projects that foster dialogue with the community. The title of the 9th edition is, in Portuguese, "Se o clima for favorable" (If the climate is favorable); in Spanish, "Si el tiempo lo permite" (If the weather allows it); in English, "Weather Permitting." These titles invite us to reflect on when, how, by whom, and why certain works of art and ideas gain or lose visibility at a given moment in time. The promise of the 9th Mercosul Biennial | Porto Alegre is to identify, propose, and direct changes in belief systems and evaluations of experiences and innovations. It aims to articulate ontological and technological questions through artistic practice, the production of objects, and the intersections of experience with art. This edition of the biennial can be considered a space to confront natural resources in a new light and speculate on the foundations that marked distinctions between discovery and invention, as well as the values of sustainability and entropy. To achieve this, the 9th Mercosul Biennial | Porto Alegre brings together the art of visual artists with the voices of others who dedicate themselves to the meeting points of culture and nature. It brings together works considering different types of atmospheric disturbances that drive travel and social displacement, technological advances and global development, vertical expansions in space, and transversal explorations through time. This Biennial involves examining the feelings these movements provoke, examining the affects they manifest. It requires inhabiting, mining, investigating, and exploring what lies below and above the social sphere—what is tangible and tenuous, what resides at the bottom of the sea and in the atmosphere, what lies underground and in outer space. The artistic director and general curator of the 9th Mercosul Biennial | Porto Alegre is Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy. The curatorial team includes Raimundas Malašauskas, Mônica Hoff, Bernardo de Souza, Sarah Demeuse, Daniela Pérez, Júlia Rebouças, and Dominic Willsdon. Luiza Proença is the editorial coordinator.