With Ana Mendes, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon, Clayton F. Lino, Director of Institutional Relations at Atlantic Forest Biosphere Reserve, Brazil, Marcello Dantas exhibition curator of AWW Brazil, and moderation of Helena Freitas, Director of the Park.

In a perspective of a joint reflection of the exhibition “Ai Weiwei: Intertwine”, Science and Art come together to dialogue in the Museum and in the Park.

Ana Mendes, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon, within the scope of the theme Art Activism in the Anthropocene and Plantationocene, will trace continuities in Ai Weiwei's art activism, re-examining works such as Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995), with a focus on the ideas of mortality, copy and “technical reproducibility”. In a second moment, the exhibition Entrelaçar will be framed in a post-humanist approach to planetary, Weiwei’s response to the Anthropocene and Plantationocene “crises” through artistic processes of “technical reproducibility” (moulding, casting, photography and filming).

Clayton F. Lino, Director of Institutional Relations at Atlantic Forest Biosphere Reserve, Brazil will present the instruments for conservation, knowledge and sustainable development  in the Atlantic Forest Biosphere Reserve (RBMA), the largest unit of UNESCO's RB Network. With about 90 million hectares, it forms an immense ecological corridor involving the 17 Brazilian states where the Atlantic Forest occurs, one of the most beautiful, biodiverse and threatened tropical forests on the planet. The RBMA, like the other MAB/Unesco Biosphere Reserves, has as its basic functions the conservation of biodiversity, the dissemination of traditional and scientific knowledge and the promotion of sustainable development, based on an effectively participatory governance. In addition to fulfilling its mission through mechanisms such as participatory and decentralized management, it promotes the definition of public policies, partnerships, local development projects and science valorization, with the strength of art, history and culture as basic tools of action. The presentation by Clayton Lino, Director of the RBMA, addresses the importance of these cultural elements in the struggle for the Reserve.

Marcello Dantas, curator of Ai Weiwei's series of 6 exhibitions in Latin America and Cordoaria in Lisbon, will reveal the story behind the project that resulted in Ai Weiwei's Pequi Tree and all its political, environmental and symbolic consequences surrounding the project. A prospecting journey from of the casual encounter of the roots to the technical challenges faced by a transnational team before the monumental dimension of work. The link of symbolisms that originate in a poem by Ai Qing, father of Ai Weiwei and connect the cultures of Brazil, Portugal and China through roots that he shaped.