metaLAB (at) Berlin: Up-Dates on Weather

In cooperation with ClimArt, situated within ZK/U Berlin, metaLAB (at) Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, presents Up-Dates on Weather: a collaborative research investigating in/visibilities of climate change through case studies, prototypes, and strategic interventions to raise awareness and mobilize urban climate resilience. 

The multi-faceted project is taking part in “Commons Cosmodrome—Re-entering the spaces of ZK/U”. “Commons Cosmodrome” is the reopening of ZK/U Berlin and takes place from September 12–15, 2024. ZK/U is a partner of Berlin Art Week with “Commons Cosmodrome”. 

Up-Dates on Weather challenges the politics of truth and data representation from the perspective of artistic and practice-based research. It seeks to reframe and reimagine our perceptions of data, exploring how political claims, urban politics, and cultural agency create new possibilities for sensual, textual, and visual experiences. During “Commons Cosmodrome”, the audience delves into the spatial and temporal entanglements of everyday, seemingly unspectacular weather data. Featuring tattoos as weather visualizations, visitors are invited to participate in a questionnaire about the current weather, after which they can receive a personalized tattoo that reveals their approximate answers as a unique work of body art. 

Building on ZK/U’s narrative of Planetary Agencies, the project interrogates how art can create a space of agency for non-human actors. It reconsiders weather data as part of a historical and cultural continuum, structured by textual and visual programs that commemorate or prefigure narratives of common purpose, origin, or future. Key questions addressed include the roles of data, algorithms, machine learning, network structures, and sensing devices in the relationships between species and non-species, and what truths are neglected by data representation.

Happening simultaneously with the reopening of the newly renovated ZK/U building, alongside Up-Dates on Weather, several other events will enrich the diverse program of “Commons Cosmodrome”. These include four days of exhibitions, concerts, performances, cinema, and food.

metaLAB is an idea foundry, knowledge-design lab, and production studio experimenting in the networked arts and humanities, located at Harvard University, Freie Universität Berlin, and the Academy of Arts and Design Basel. More information about metaLAB and the continuation of the collaborative research can be found here.