April 1–May 15, 2022
Opening April 1, Weather Engines consists of an art exhibition, a program of talks, performances, and workshops as well as a book publication that offers contemporary terms for experiencing the politics and aesthetics of weather. The project is part of the continuous engagement of Onassis Stegi with ecological awareness and environmental protection. Curated by Daphne Dragona and Jussi Parikka, Weather Engines takes place at Onassis Stegi and the National Observatory of Athens. The large exhibition features sound and video installations, sculptures, films, and 3D-printed objects that explore the poetics, politics, and technologies of the environment from the ground to the sky, and from soil to atmosphere.
Weather can be described as a dynamical system of wind, pressure, temperature, and humidity, which affects both human and nonhuman worlds. It changes from moment to moment and differs from place to place, while being forecasted in the attempt to control its effects. Weather observation has turned out to be part of the attempts to modify weather from experimental military projects to technological responses to mitigate climate change. The weather, though, is more than any physical fact in meteorological knowledge. It can also refer to different atmospheres which can be metaphorical or political and related to breathing and living.
The Weather Engines exhibition presents artistic works that ask questions of weather, the environment, and technological culture. The works take the climate crisis as a starting point, investigating the elements that engineer our lives. Heat and cold, wind and rain are discussed in relation to different geographical and political contexts from past to present and speculative futures. Oceans, clouds, and forests are acknowledged as life-sustaining engines creating the atmosphere that we are inhabiting but also affecting. Meteorological instruments as well as natural bioindicators are the focal point of works that explore how weather phenomena are captured and studied.
The exhibition brings to view the conflicts in describing, experiencing, and resisting colonial weather and atmospheres. In the age of anthropogenic climate, all weather is artificial. If all weather is made, then this also means that there is still the potential to struggle for the weathers and climates we would rather want to live in.
The participating artists are: Kat Austen, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Felipe Castelblanco, Kent Chan, Coti K., Denise Ferreira da Silva & Arjuna Neuman, DESIGN EARTH, Matthias Fritsch, Geocinema, Abelardo Gil-Fournier & Jussi Parikka, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Hypercomf, Lito Kattou, Zisis Kotionis, Manifest Data Lab, Barbara Marcel, Matterlurgy, Petros Moris, Sybille Neumeyer, Afroditi Psarra & Audrey Briot, Susan Schuppli, Rachel Shearer & Cathy Livermore, Stefania Strouza, Superflux, Paky Vlassopoulou, and Thomas Wrede.
For the opening weekend (April 1–3), the Weather Engines conference addresses aesthetics and technologies of weather. Geoengineering, weaponization of weather but also discourses of justice and resistance are featured in the discussions and performances. The talks are responses to the temperature scale of contemporary political atmosphere as much as poetic ways of expressing the deep interconnections between humans and nonhumans, scientific research and artistic work. The parallel program also features workshops by open-weather and Hypercomf, and an installation by 3 137.
The publication Words of Weather: A Glossary is edited by Parikka and Dragona and features entries that address terminology of weather in philosophical, critical, and creative ways. From Atmosphere and Aerosols to Wind and Waves, the book brings together many of the leading writers and artists working on environmental media, justice, and aesthetics. Among the contributors are: Benjamin Bratton, Holly Jean Buck, J. R. Carpenter, Sria Chatterjee, Sean Cubitt, Heather Davis, open-weather, Janine Randerson, Karolina Sobecka, May Ee Wong.
Weather Engines is produced by Onassis Stegi and realized within the framework of Studiotopia network, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.
In collaboration with the National Observatory of Athens.
Supported by Aarhus University’s School of Communication and Culture and the project Design and Aesthetics for Environmental Data.
