WEATHER ENGINES | EXHIBITION | ONASSIS STEGI | SEASON 2021-22 by Onassis Stegi

EXHIBITION GUIDE

Onassis Culture

Director of Culture: Afroditi Panagiotakou Deputy Director of Culture: Dimitris Theodoropoulos Exhibition Credits

Communication & Content Department

Organized by Onassis Stegi Curated by Daphne Dragona and Jussi Parikka Coordination: Christos Carras Production Management: Pasqua Vorgia Exhibition Design: dragonas architecture studio Scientific Advisory: Fiori-Anastasia Metallinou Audiovisual Installations Coordination: Makis Faros Technical Organization and Overview: Vassilis Charalambopoulos Production Assistance: Konstantina Melachrinou European Projects and Networks: Dora Vougiouka, Vera Petmeza Audiovisual Installations Technical Director: Lefteris Karabilas Electrical Facilities Technical Manager: Giorgos Raptis ICT Systems: Manos Karteris Line Production: Despina Sifniadou, Marianota Giannaki, Danae Giannakopoulou, Ioulia Stamouli Translation & Text Editing: Vassilis Douvitsas Exhibition Guide Design: Grid Office Collaborating Institution: National Observatory of Athens

Group Communication & Content Manager: Demetres Drivas Content Leader: Alexandros Roukoutakis Head of Creative: Christos Sarris Campaign Manager: Daniel Vergiadis Content Manager – Publication Project Management: Christina Kosmoglou Media Office: Vaso Vasilatou, Katerina Chortaria-Tamvaki, Nefeli Tsartaklea-Kasselaki Social Media: Vasilis Bibas, Sylvia Kouveli, Alexandra Sarantopoulou Copy Editors: Evangelia Kolaiti, Margarita Grammatikou Motion Graphics: Constantinos Chaidalis Graphic Design: Theodoros Koveos Audiovisual Coordinator: Smaragda Dogani Website Editor: Yiota Loura

“Weather Engines” (1.4–15.5.2022) is realized within the framework of Studiotopia project, co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union In collaboration with Goulandris Natural History Museum Supported by Aarhus University's School of Communication and Culture and the project Design and Aesthetics for Environmental Data IN THE FRAMEWORK OF

CO-FUNDED BY

IN COLLABORATION WITH

WEATHER ENGINES

Weather Engines explores 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 features artistic works that ask questions of weather, the environment, and technological culture. The installations, images, as well as video, sound, and sculptural 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. Other projects examine and expose the exploitation and weaponization of bad or extreme weather. The artworks outline an environmental aesthetics that also addresses climate justice. The exhibition brings to view the conflicts in describing, experiencing, and resisting colonial weather and atmospheres. In the age of human-changed 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. Weather Engines is taking place at the Onassis Stegi and at the National Observatory of Athens. At Stegi, through the works elements and phenomena of weather are discussed in relation to the planetary crisis. At the Observatory, the hosted projects refer to meteorological instruments and infrastructures taking into consideration questions of accessibility, scale, and power. — Daphne Dragona, Jussi Parikka

WEATHER ENGINES 01.04—15.05.22 ONASSIS STEGI & NATIONAL OBSERVATORY OF ATHENS

CURATED BY DAPHNE DRAGONA & JUSSI PARIKKA EXHIBITION PARTICIPANTS: 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 ZISSIS 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 THOMAS WREDE

-1 EXHIBITION SPACE, ONASSIS STEGI

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NATIONAL OBSERVATORY OF ATHENS

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Rachel Shearer & Cathy Livermore Te Huri Wai, 2021 7-Channel Sound Installation, 25΄ Māori “Te Huri Wai” refers to the weather cycle and the presence of personified winds and water based on an ancient account of southern Aotearoa (New Zealand). The artwork takes its narrative from the oral account of Teone Taare Tikao, a tohunga (knowledgeable expert) from the lands of the Waitaha people and it is brought to life through the breath of Waitaha descendant Cathy Livermore. In the Māori world, personifications depict the ‘natural’ world as ancestors or extended family members. The narrative of the work features the feminine forces of the powerful Hine-pu-nui-o-toka, the wind from the southwest and her five daughters: Hine-aroraki who presides over the soaring of the birds; Hinearoaro-pari who oversees the echoes on the cliffs next to the sea; Hine-hauone who commands the sands at the meeting of the ocean and land; Hine-roroki, the northerly wind; and Hine-rotia, the westerly. The speakers are orientated in relation to each wind’s assigned direction. A further sound source holds the place of water.

With a soundscape by Makis Faros created especially for the work as a gesture of cultural exchange. Faros’s contribution refers to the Greek mountainous countryside and its particular sounds. Different elements come together without overlapping, and mimic the poetic function of memory.

2 Thomas Wrede Rhonegletscher II, 2018 Fine Art Print, Triptych, 120x390cm Glaciers and sea ice act as a protective shelter for the planet, reflecting excess heat back to space and keeping the temperature cooler. The Rhône Glacier is one of the most famous alpine glaciers and an attraction for travelers since the 19th century. As a result of global warming, the glacier retreated dramatically between 2011 and 2016. In 2018, the Carlen Family who manages the ice grotto decided to cover a part of the glacier with a white fleece blanket which reflects the sunlight and slows down the melting process. Thomas Wrede has been studying and photographing the ice grotto since 2017, capturing with his images the dying of a glacier as well as the futility of humans trying to halt climate change. The weathering of the synthetic blankets and the contradictions that it involves are also of interest for the artist as they release microplastics into the environment and the natural with the artificial—a body of ice and particles of plastic—find themselves in a form of an unavoidable symbiosis.

Courtesy of Beck & Eggeling, © Thomas Wrede / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

3 Manifest Data Lab (Tom Corby, Gavin Baily, Jonathan Mackenzie, Louise Sime, Giles Lane, Erin Dickson, George Roussos) Carbon Topologies, 2022 3D Print Laser Sintering, 47.9x50x47.4cm, Vol. 49653cm3, Video “Carbon Topologies” is a three-dimensional planetary mapping of the locations, amounts, and flows of CO2 resulting from the activity of the global economy from the 1970s to the present. It shows how we can read planetary inequalities through data that is mapped across the planetary surface. The model captures what is normally invisible, extruding data describing fossil fuel emissions, energy usage, manufacturing, transportation, travel, and food production. The crustal geologies, scars, ridges, and archipelagos of carbon production describe a planetary condition catastrophically subject to unsustainable patterns of consumption and extractivist economics. The structural figuring of the model’s stalagmite forms manifest how CO2 emissions have arisen predominantly in the global North evidencing a historic responsibility and connecting them to wider political processes of inequality and power distribution.

4 Hypercomf Marine Caves and Benthic Terrazzo, 2021 HD Video with sound, 15΄ Greek with English subtitles Benthic Terrazzo, 2022 Terrazzo: Cement, seashells, marble and granite, marine plastic waste and drifted plastic, 500x50cm Vast amount of plastic used in everyday life ends up in oceans and seas where it breaks into smaller pieces. Microplastics affect marine species and interfere with the flow of carbon in the ocean. “Marine Caves and Benthic Terrazzo” is an outcome of a year-long collaboration between the artist duo Hypercomf and a team of marine researchers studying plastic pollution in the sea and on the shore. The researchers explored the marine cave ecosystems of Chania in Crete and documented their biodiversity as well as their morphology, taking sediment core samples for analysis in the lab for microplastic pollution. The artists wandered at the seashore and collected plastic debris coming up with new uses for it. “Benthic Terrazzo” is a series of floor tiles, prototypes of a custom technique based on the traditional Venetian terrazzo. The proposed technique incorporates oceanic pollutants such as plastic objects, microplastics, nets, and ropes that replace part of the concrete and sand mixture typically used. Building associations between marine caves and human homes, the project addresses a call to rethink the habits and costs of everyday life.

Scientific consultant: Markos Digenis, marine biologist Equipment/material support: Blue Cycle network Produced by Onassis Stegi as part of the Studiotopia project which is co-funded by the Creative Europe program of European Union

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5 Matterlurgy (Helena Hunter & Mark Peter Wright) Hydromancy, 2021 Single-Channel 4K Film with sound, 14΄ Data Dialogues, 2022 Image print, 66.6x33.5cm, text panels 25x40cm Earth oceans form a significant part of the planet’s weather engines. “Hydromancy” reveals the spaces, tools, and technologies involved in the science of ocean sensing. Filmed on location at the National Oceanography Centre (NOCS), UK, we visit a coral lab bathed in blue light; an engineering workshop where autonomous vehicles are fitted with sensors to measure ocean currents, temperature, and chemical composition; a lab space with cultured algae and phytoplankton. Haunting the film is the Hydromancer, an utterance between voice and atmosphere that queries forms of knowing.

Co-commissioned by John Hansard Gallery and Onassis Stegi for “Weather Engines” “Data Dialogues” consists of an image depicting data collected by an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle that was processed by scientist Dr Filipa Carvalho (NOCS). The accompanying transcript situates a conversation between Matterlurgy and Dr Carvalho as they discuss the image and how visualizations are made.

The image in “Data Dialogues” is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (GOCART, Grant agreement No. 724416)

6 Abelardo Gil-Fournier & Jussi Parikka Seed, Image, Ground, 2020 Two-Channel HD Video with sound projected as Single-Channel, 9΄55΄΄ English “Seed, Image, Ground” deals with air, wind, and the soil as the video montage addresses seed bombing––a technique used in forestry, agriculture, and environmental restoration where biodegradable containers filled with seeds and soil nutrients are dropped from flying aircrafts to the ground. The work investigates the link between seeds, aerial operations, photographic images, and the transformation of earth surfaces into data. It demonstrates how the history of botanic knowledge and visual surveys of green surfaces is a history of images but also a history of circulation, speed, and motorized aircraft. Growth and energy, but also wind and air become elemental parts in the split-screen space that conveys how our understanding of the environment is interlinked with the technological tools we use to intervene in ecological processes. Modification of surfaces of earth is part of the long history of ecological engineering.

Sound design by María Andueza Olmedo Commissioned by Fotomuseum Winterthur

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7 Kent Chan Heat Waves, 2021–ongoing Two-Channel HD Video with sound, 21΄20΄΄

8 DESIGN EARTH The Planet After Geoengineering, 2021 Graphic Animation, 13΄30΄΄

“Heat Waves” comprises twin montages of historical and contemporary imagery and videos. It weaves together filmed and found footage from art history to DJ booths, from weather reports to street parties in an eclectic, dynamic mix. The montage examines the contexts, politics, and proliferation of the many aesthetics of heat that stem from regions of the tropics, where their solar proximity bestows heat in abundance. Such an aesthetic is often charged with vibrancy, vitality, and visual complexity, while featured at a time when the Earth is simultaneously warming. Threading a path through the colonial legacies of representation and rhetoric concerning the tropic en route to their future tense is this mix of images and sounds that offer a contribution to the sliding scale of thermopolitics of temperature.

Geoengineering refers to technologies that counteract the effects of anthropogenic climate change by deliberately intervening in Earth systems. Climate scientists and policymakers are deeply divided over which forms of geoengineering to pursue, if any. What looms for the planet as the window for action on climate change is closing rapidly? “The Planet After Geoengineering“ is a speculative fabulation about climate engineering technologies. The project portrays a series of possible Earths following the deployment of such promissory technologies, all while situating them within a genealogy of climatecontrol projects from 19th-century rainmaking machines and volcanic eruptions to Cold War military plans. The series of five chapters —Petrified Carbon, Arctic Albedo, Sky River, Sulfur Storm, and Dust Cloud—are assembled into one planetary section from the deep underground to outer space. Each geostory constructs the worlds of such technologies accounting for its inadvertent externalities—of sites, scales, economies, values, and lifeforms.

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9 Lito Kattou Bodies X-XV, 2022 Sculptures: aluminum, steel, acrylic paint, nickel plated electroformed copper Body X: 206x149.5x40cm; Body XI: 210x115x40cm; Body XII: 210x136.3x40cm; Body XIII: 206x144x40cm; Body XIV: 193x149.8x40cm; Body XV: 206x149x40cm The installation “Bodies X-XV” consists of aluminum hybrid figures that resemble correspondents and solemn wanderers at the same time. Continuing her “Bodies” series of works, the artist develops a cluster of two-dimensional sculptures related to the warming climate of the Mediterranean. Structured from an assembly of human, technological, and natural parts, the figures emerge as environmental beings. Although they cannot be identified with known characters or myths, the drawings and imagery on their epidermis reveal their geographic origins. The element of fire traced on the bodies implies that they have departed from turbulent locations, holding memories of wildfire incidents or being capable of healing affected places and traumas. These anthropomorphic but also eerie bodies are accompanied by elements that the artist collected at Mediterranean regions; elements like thorns and baskets bear a physical remembrance of loss and ecological destruction but also a reality that is to be opposed by bodies captured in movement.

Commissioned by Onassis Stegi for “Weather Engines”

10 Petros Moris Anagram (Orgic Clouds, Litho Droughts), 2022 Wall Sculpture: marble on aluminum honeycomb panel, 250x150x3cm “Anagram (Orgic Clouds, Litho Droughts)” is a marble-inlay sculpture created as an apotropaic dedication to Earth’s evolving extreme weather phenomena. Floods and droughts—constantly becoming more and more intense and frequent— are captured in a two-part anagram poem and are discussed together as destructive effects of climate change, deforestation, and human intervention. The letters of the poem are cut with the aid of CNC waterjet and switched around within the surface, disrupting the natural pattern of the stone. The surface of the Euboea marble used broadly in the city of Athens resembles a cloudy sky and at the same time constitutes a visual encoding of the slow geological processes of the planet. As a metamorphic rock, it was formed by the high temperature and pressure of Earth’s crust. “Anagram” looks at geology, climate, and civilization as an integrated network that entangles inorganic matter, biological processes, and cultural codes into a common ‘Earth System.’

Commissioned by Onassis Stegi for “Weather Engines”

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11 Sybille Neumeyer souvenirs entomologiques #1: odonata / weathering data, 2020 Video Essay with sound, 20΄15΄΄ English The work “souvenirs entomologiques #1: odonata / weathering data” explores humans, weather, and insects in a data-driven world. It follows dragonflies on multiple scales through time and space: from ecosystems to museum collections, from weather worlds into data clouds, from their geological past into uncertain futures. The insects are mediated, shaped, and reshaped by co-evolving modes of mapping, monitoring, and collecting. On the edge of biocultural diversity extinctions, the speculative video essay traces the metamorphosis of a data bank into a consciously collecting network that ponders about the gaps between data, evidence, and knowledge: by pausing monological accumulations of data, it is eventually unlocking memory space for a re-collection of alternate knowledges, cultural values, colonial histories, as ground for ecological futures. The recollection of traditional ecological knowledge reframes observation as practice of care. For the presentation of the work in “Weather Engines,” part of the Insects Collection of the Goulandris Natural History Museum is hosted. These specimens originate from China. Courtesy of the Goulandris Natural History Museum.

Sound composition by Nathan Gray Commissioned by ZKM for “Critical Zones— Observatories for Earthly Politics” in collaboration with the SMNK – State Museum of Natural History, Karlsruhe

12 Matthias Fritsch Mycelium Garden, 2022 Living Sculpture, dimensions variable Full HD Video, no sound, 3΄ The Earth is a system. Animals, plants, but also fungi do not only react to weather but create it as they process energy and matter. Fungi normally remain hidden underground and we only see their mycelium when we dig up the soil or collect their fruiting bodies during the seasons. While plants convert the sun’s energy into chemical energy stored in carbohydrates and other biomass, fungi have the ability to break down anything organic and feed on the energy stored in organic matter, as well as extract minerals from rocks. The mycorrhizae also form close bonds with plants, exchanging minerals and water for sugars. As decomposers, fungi form the basis for the next life cycle and nourish the new growth of plants that create Earth’s atmosphere. “Mycelium Garden” stages different strains of mycelium that feed on organic material. The fungi create a microclimate of gasses and aerosols alongside a beautiful variety of fruiting bodies.

In collaboration with The Mushroom Circle (themushroomcircle.wordpress.com)

13 Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan Proxy Climates, 2019–ongoing Installation: 6 objects (pollen cores) of 50x7cm diameter In the midst of planetary biodiversity crisis, vegetation is slowly vanishing in many regions of the world. This prompts us to ask how to read the environment from weather patterns to soil and plants. What traces are archived for future study? Pollen is a paleoclimatic proxy, used in climate reconstruction and understanding of global climate dynamics. With its diverse range of climate sensitivities, it is an indicator of past vegetation changes. Since 2019 Benera & Estefan have been collecting pollen grains from dry land regions in the process of desertification, where vegetation is slowly vanishing. The artist duo started with the Oltenian Sahara in Southern Romania, then extending the research to other regions across Europe including Greece. The Mediterranean region is an area particularly vulnerable to climate change due to its sensitivity to drought. The collected pollen particles are archived and presented in the shape of geological core samples. The project aims to preserve the plants’ genetic material and memory of disappearing flora, while also serving as possible scientific material for future paleoclimatic studies.

Part of the work was commissioned by Onassis Stegi for “Weather Engines”

14 Stefania Strouza Altepetl, 2018 Sculpture: Synthetic crocodile skin, obsidian, silica beads, resin, 200x100x5cm “Altepetl” refers to an Aztec term, meaning ‘water-mountain,’ the ideal environment upon which a civilization flourishes. Stefania Strouza uses the word to refer to the story of Mexico City in relation to water, colonialism, and climate change. Inspired by the animist representations of the environment in pre-Columbian maps and the feminized deities of the earth and the river waters, the sculpture takes the form of an imagined, three-dimensional map of the antique lake and its surroundings. The materials of the work bear environmental symbols. A synthetic leather with the texture of crocodile skin represents the female goddess of the earth in Aztec cosmology while its jaded color points to Chalchiuhtlicue, namely ‘She of the Jade Skirt,’ the Aztec goddess of water. The silica beads lying above the skin, used commonly nowadays as a synthetic substance for desiccation, trace the original form of the lake system of Mexico City before its drainage by the Spaniards. Finally, breasts made of local obsidian mark the sculpture as symbols of the volcanic terrain surrounding the city, but also point to the femicides in contemporary Mexico.

Courtesy of the artist and a.antonopoulou.art The work was developed during the BKA artist-in-residence program in Mexico City in 2018 with the support of the Austrian Cultural Forum

15 Felipe Castelblanco Rio Arriba [Upriver], 2020 Film Essay with sound, Full HD, color, 14΄ Spanish

16 Susan Schuppli Cold Cases, 2021/2022 Full HD Videos with sound English

“Rio Arriba [Upriver]” is cinematic cartography of the Colombian Amazon region where indigenous resistance, trees, soils, clouds, light, and shadow inter-exist. The two-channel film essay follows a journey upstream the Putumayo River. Departing from the Siona territory in the lower Amazon at 300 meters above sea level (M.A.S.L.) to the Quillacinga territory in the highlands of the Colombian Andes at 3000 M.A.S.L., “Rio Arriba [Upriver]” takes the viewer along a meandering river that cuts across territories in dispute. As part of this riverside journey, different types of clouds are discussed: some are formed by mist, some by fire, and others by chemical spraying. Here overlapping sovereignties emerge and extractive industries clash with human and nonhuman communities resisting violence across this vertical axis of power and occupation. “Rio Arriba [Upriver]” juxtaposes natural and toxic clouds, local and political weathers, rights and interests, having the living body of the river as a starting point.

1. Susan Schuppli with Forensic Architecture / Omar Ferwati, Nicholas Masterton, “Freezing Deaths & Abandonment Across Canada,” 31΄55΄΄• 2. Susan Schuppli with researcher Henry Bradley and Forensic Architecture / Omar Ferwati, Kishan San, “Weaponizing Water Against Water Protectors at Standing Rock, N. Dakota,” 18΄34΄΄& “Icebox Detention Along the US-Mexico Border,” 14΄18΄΄• 3. Susan Schuppli, “Cold Rights,” 1΄40΄΄ “Cold Cases” explore the politics of ‘cold’ through a series of cases and contexts in which the differential experiences and effects of temperature are entangled with legal questions, human rights violations, but also claims for social and environmental justice. Glaciers and ice sheets are universally recognized as under considerable threat by global warming and in urgent need of practices of care and preservation. Temperature is often ‘naturalized’ as an ambient environmental condition beyond human control when it comes to accounting for the production of harm and violence against bodies within cold contexts. Through the analysis of a series of contemporary as well as historic ‘cold cases’ the project explores the strategic role of temperature. Temperature becomes a register of violence; one that includes the legacies of climate colonialism, longstanding socio-economic inequalities, and ongoing structural racism. “Cold Cases” videos invite viewers to reflect upon the ethical imaginaries implicit in the conjoined term ‘just-ice’ and by extension the experiential valence of temperature.

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17 Superflux Refuge for Resurgence, Window View, 2021 3D Modeling & Animation with sound, 20΄48΄΄ English

18 Denise Ferreira da Silva & Arjuna Neuman 4 Waters–Deep Implicancy, 2018 Full HD Video with sound, 29΄10΄΄ English

Having survived Earth’s abrupt shift to an era of precarious climate, a multi-species community gathers in the blasted ruins of modernity to find new ways of living together. The “Window View” from Superflux’s “Refuge for Resurgence” is part of a larger installation that addresses themes of ecological interdependence and a more-thanhuman future. The “Window View” from “Refuge for Resurgence” offers a glimpse into a layered rewilded city: various notions of normality are now underwater. It depicts how human and nonhuman life come together to revive their surroundings. It imagines a new home, a home built on humility, resourcefulness, and imagination. A home strong enough to weather the storm, to rise from the flood, to endure the heat. This might be a hotter, wetter, more organic city cohabited by all species. Hope is the linchpin of resurgence. “Refuge for Resurgence” is about working together to carve a new world out of the smoldering remains of the old, to forge enduring forms of sharing and survival.

“4 Waters” is a film about four oceans or seas–– the Mediterranean, the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean––and four islands––Lesvos, Marshall Islands, Haiti, Tiwi. Fragments, sounds, and stories convey the experiential moment of entanglement prior to separation, what Ferreira da Silva and Neuman call Deep Implicancy. Through a series of experimental migrations and elemental crossings “4 Waters” questions the form of the universal human, its calcified and exceptional origins, and in particular its ethical program. Wandering and wondering through a transformative figuring of justice, the film discusses migration and displacement in relation to the environmental crisis, questioning Western European knowledge and thinking. Structured around four chapters––air, water, earth, and fire––, it also comments upon Plato’s geometric cosmic solids––earth as a cube, air as an octahedron, fire as a tetrahedron, water as an icosahedron––asking what such an understanding of ‘nature’ brings.

Project authors: Anab Jain and Jon Ardern 3D Modelling & Animation: Sebastian Tiew This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant agreement No 870759)

19 Zissis Kotionis Barometer and Aerographs, 2022 Installation: Reeds, cord, plates, cement bricks, sand, variable dimensions

20 Paky Vlassopoulou To Love the Hibiscus, You Must First Love the Monsoon, 2022 Ceramics, variable dimensions

The project “Barometer and Aerographs” proposes temporary, reversible structures for measuring weather phenomena according to a site-specific interpretation of the area. The metric machines installed measure time with non-measurable measurement indicators. This contradiction seeks to highlight the limits of the measurability of time/weather (‘kairos’) and its reduction to quantitative data. The “Aerographs” consist of reeds hanging from the branches of a plum-tree and resting slightly in pots of sand on the grass. As the branches move with the wind, the tips of the reeds softly carve the sand. The “Aerographs” operate as wind-meters that record the traces of the sensory uptake of weather by the body. At the top of the hill next to the Museum and in a position with a direct view to the Acropolis, the “Barometer” is installed on an existing marble pedestal from where the Parthenon is visually targeted. The work provides a platform for the observation of the verticality of the temple and its rhythm that resists weather conditions and measures time. The project is a statement against the neurotic treatment of meteorological data by the media. The more the data increases, the more the weather remains unknown and inanimate.

Water is a regulatory factor not only for the climate but also for life on the planet. Today’s higher temperatures and often extreme weather conditions affect the availability and distribution of rainfall, snowmelt, river flows, and groundwater. This also further deteriorates water quality. The work “To Love the Hibiscus, You Must First Love the Monsoon” is a composition of objects that refer to water collection, transport, and storage. Tiles, pipes, filters, vessels, and funnels that seem to be complete or broken, industrial or handmade, of the past or the present are found on the ground as fragments of water infrastructures and utensils. They point to the use, waste, or shortage of water, whereas their placement highlights the connection between water, ground, vegetation, and life. The title of the piece is a line from Hala Alyan’s poem “Thirty” and refers to the need to confront a system larger than ours.

Graphics: Alexandra Siougari Commissioned by Onassis Stegi for “Weather Engines“

Commissioned by Onassis Stegi for “Weather Engines”

21 Kat Austen Time to Break Down (Echoes of the Palaeoplasticene), 2022 3D-Printed Objects “Time to Break Down (Echoes of the Palaeoplasticene)” addresses the lifecycle of plastic in the environment by engaging with a speculative past where plastic-based fungi evolved naturally. This fictional past invites visitors to realize the longevity of the material and to reflect upon the implications for our current and future ecosystems. Designed to be durable and unreactive, plastic outlasts its surrounding flora and fauna. Yet ecosystems are already adapting to this new materiality with microorganisms evolving to feed on plastic and plants being shown to take microplastics into tissue. The pink plastic mushrooms of the project point to anthropogenic petrochemical ecologies and legacies affecting human and nonhuman worlds. The six-week placement of the objects in the garden will not affect the living surroundings.

Scientific Collaborators: Indrė Žliobaitė & Laurence Gill Producer: Andrew Newman (Ars Electronica) Realized within the framework of the Studiotopia project at Ars Electronica Linz GmbH & Co KG, co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union

22 Barbara Marcel CINE-LIANA at ATTO Tower: Two Chapters, 2020 Full HD Video with sound, 2 Chapters of a 4-Channel Video Installation, 62΄ Portuguese, English The largest tower in Latin America, the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO), studies the interactions between the forest, soils, and atmosphere in order to understand the role of the Amazon basin for the Earth system. The tower is part of an international cooperation between Brazil and Germany, built and financed by INPA––Amazon Research Institute and MaxPlanck Institute. For the project “CINE-LIANA at ATTO Tower: Two Chapters,” the tower was temporarily occupied and transformed into a community radio. The dialogue between scientists and local inhabitants addresses core questions of the environmental crisis we are living in: How is the public discussion related to it conducted? Which perspectives are represented and where do the different discourses enter into dialogue? During the process, scientific evidence and ancestral knowledges sometimes intersect, occasionally disconnect, while the scientific community listens and learns more about the struggles in defense of the territories and local livelihoods of the Amazonian populations.

23 Afroditi Psarra & Audrey Briot Listening Space, 2019-22 Installation: Knit 170x220cm, garment with wearable dipole antenna 115x150cm, miscellaneous electronics, HD Video with sound “Listening Space” is an ongoing artistic research project that uses NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) weather satellite data as a raw material for poetic exploration and citizen science. Using wearable hand-crafted antennas and software-defined radio, satellite signals are intercepted, decoded, and then knitted into textiles. The ecologies of transmission that comprise the Radio Spectrum are the ultimate expression of the so-called Anthropocene, as they permit the operation of human life as we know it (telecommunications, environmental monitoring, radio astronomy, FM/AM radio etc.) and shape our understanding of the planet. By investigating the energies that have been harvested by humanity to knit this complex layer, the project aims to create poetic connotations between textiles as a means of data detection, collection, and archiving, and bodies as agents of power to re-interpret current technologies through handmade crafting techniques. “Listening Space” attempts to enhance the human capability to sense and to embody the dialogues intercepted between Earth and its satellites.

Supported by DXARTS and funded by the Bergstrom Award for Art and Science

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24 Geocinema (Asia Bazdyrieva & Solveig Qu Suess) Making of Earths, 2021 Full HD Video with sound, 35΄ English, Chinese As a contribution to understanding weather modification and environmental control, “Making of Earths” explores the persisting modern trope that the future is manageable. Following a year-long, documentary-led research, the film traces current efforts made across China and South-East Asia, to predict the future of Earth’s increasingly strange climates, in the shadow of attempts to control land and territory. A chasm widens between the lived experience of overwhelming uncertainty and the mass of data collected to profit from this instability. Life on the ground is mismatched with the planetary scale infrastructures of observation and management. Weather and climate become geopolitical. The film picks up on these themes and subverts the idea of knowing, instead opening up spaces of disorientation within the paranoid structure of totality.

Music: Original Score by Jessika Khazrik

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25 Coti K. Click Ensemble, 2022 Sound Installation: wood, solenoid, computer, atmospheric sensors, variable dimensions

26 Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg The Wilding of Mars, 2019 4-Screen Video Installation with sound, Unity Simulation, 60΄

“Click Ensemble” consists of wooden structures inspired by meteorological stations and bird houses. Equipped with sensors, the sculptural installation measures temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure levels on a regular basis. Meteorological information is translated to binary code and transmitted in the area in the form of soft tonic clicks produced by a number of solenoids. Following the logic of a grandfather clock, this peculiar engine announces time and weather. With a mix of sounds that are not easily identifiable or understandable by the human ear, this is a continuously changing acoustic ensemble where elements from different worlds meet and intersect.

“The Wilding of Mars” simulates the growth of a planetary wilderness, seeded with Earth life forms. In the installation, a wild garden on Mars thrives over millennia, its growth seen to us over an hour. The plants spread north from Mars’ South Pole, developing an ecosystem determined by local and global parameters of water, temperature, and nutrients. Like other ‘frontiers,’ Mars is seen by some humans as open for exploitation, whether or not indigenous life exists there. Instead, “The Wilding of Mars” prioritizes a nonhuman perspective with plants visibly growing and colonizing the terrain. Could we imagine Mars––a planet of extreme storms, freezing temperatures, and an atmosphere poisonous to humans primarily of carbon dioxide––colonized only by plants that adapt and flourish without us? Two simulations run in parallel, reminding us that there are other paths life could take. Might leaving the planet to other life forms be the ultimate unnatural act for humans?

Commissioned by Onassis Stegi for “Weather Engines”

Commissioned by the Vitra Design Museum and the Design Museum With support from Cité du Design, Saint-Étienne

PARALLEL EVENTS

PUBLICATION

WEATHER ENGINES OPENING PROGRAM

Words of Weather: A Glossary Edited by Jussi Parikka and Daphne Dragona

1-3 April, Onassis Stegi & National Observatory of Athens

The exhibition is accompanied by the publication “Words of Weather: A Glossary” that maps terms for a political ecology of experience. With contributions by many internationally leading artists, architects, and theorists, the book summarizes key themes of the “Weather Engines” project as keywords from Atmosphere and Air to Wind and Waves, from Humidity to Military Meteorology and much more.

Contributors: Ryan Bishop, Benjamin H. Bratton, Holly Jean Buck, J. R. Carpenter, Sria Chatterjee, Sean Cubitt, Heather Davis, Daphne Dragona, The Forest Curriculum, Matthew Fuller, Geocinema, Olga Goriunova, Orit Halpern, Eva Horn, Elise Misao Hunchuck, Lydia Kallipoliti, Adrian Lahoud, open-weather, Jussi Parikka, John Durham Peters, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Robert Pietrusko, Janine Randerson, Karolina Sobecka, The Weathering Collective, May Ee Wong Designed by Typical Organization

The opening program of events for the “Weather Engines” exhibition consists of talks, discussions, and performances. Building on the exhibition and beyond, the program addresses aesthetics and technologies of weather in the age of climate change. Geoengineering, weaponization of weather but also discourses of justice and resistance are featured in the discussions and performances during the three-day program at Onassis Stegi and the National Observatory of Athens. 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.

Talks and performances will be conducted in English

PARALLEL EVENTS

PROGRAM OF TALKS AND PERFORMANCES Friday, April 1st Onassis Stegi 17:00 Welcome and opening words by Christos Carras

(Executive Director of the Onassis Stegi) and the curators Daphne Dragona and Jussi Parikka 17:10 “What’s with the weather?” A talk on extreme weather phenomena and climate change by Christos Giannakopoulos (National Observatory of Athens) Response and discussion with writer and artist James Bridle (Aegina) 18:00 “Cold Matters,” Susan Schuppli (Goldsmiths, University of London) A lecture on politics of temperature and questions of justice Discussion with Jussi Parikka 19:00 “The Anthropogenic Weather of Nano-spectacular Space,” Jessika Kharzik (Beirut/Berlin) A sound performance probing the first anthropogenic space weather, artificial radiation belts, and the role of the military 19:30 Opening of Exhibition

Saturday, April 2nd Onassis Stegi 14:30 Introduction by the curators

Daphne Dragona and Jussi Parikka

14:40 “Casting the Ocean,” Matterlurgy (London)

A performative multimedia presentation that explores how the ocean is cast, calculated, and modeled 15:00 “Aesthetics of Weather” “Sensing, Measuring, Perceiving: On the Aesthetics of Meteorology and Climate,” Birgit Schneider (University of Potsdam) “Political Atmospherics,” Tom Corby (University of Arts, London) Moderator: Jussi Parikka 16:15 “Weather Stories” “Whiteout,” Rosa Menkman (Amsterdam) A lecture performance about an exhausting snowstorm mountain hike and a weather station “Stories on Heat,” Kent Chan (Amsterdam/ Singapore) A storytelling performance that ruminates upon art’s shared histories and futures with heat 17:00 Coffee Break

17:15 “Anthropogenic Weather,” Yuriko Furuhata

(McGill University, Montreal) (prerecorded) A talk on past and contemporary strategies of engineering the weather 17:30 “Oceans of Eternity: A Contract Unto Extinction,” Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (The Westminster Law & Theory Lab, London) A performance lecture on water, Titian, and planetary death 18:00 “Ecological Justice” “Severe, widespread, long-term: Defining the crime of ecocide using visual and spatial evidence,” Nabil Ahmed (Trondheim Academy of Fine Art) “What Nature in the Rights of Nature?”, Xenia Chiaramonte (ICI, Berlin) Moderator: Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos 19.15 Coffee Break 19:30 “Weather as Weapon” “Border Weathers: The environment as weapon at the edges of Greece,” Stefanos Levidis (Athens) Response and discussion with Yannis Orestis Papadimitriou (The Manifold, Athens) “Corpus Infinitum,” Denise Ferreira da Silva (prerecorded) A talk for the urge to turn towards an image of existence without separability 20:30 “The Forest Curriculum’s Weather Stress Index,” The Forest Curriculum (Bangkok/Berlin/Barcelona) A closing talk on sensitivities and intelligences of the more than human world

Sunday, April 3rd National Observatory of Athens 17:00 “Meteorosophy,” lecture-performance, Phoebe Giannisi

17:30 Welcome by Fiori-Anastasia Metallinou,

Astrophysicist, Communication Manager at Thissio Visitor Center, National Observatory of Athens Opening & Guided Tour at the exhibition with curators and artists present 18:30 “Listening Space,” audio outdoors performance, Afroditi Psarra & Audrey Briot

PARALLEL EVENTS

PERFORMANCES AT THE OBSERVATORY Phoebe Giannisi Meteorosophy 3 April 2022, 17:00, National Observatory of Athens

Afroditi Psarra & Audrey Briot Listening Space 3 April 2022, 18:30, National Observatory of Athens

A lecture performance that will take place at the Sanctuary of the Nymphs, a place dedicated to minor female deities that corresponded to various categories of nature such as mountains, groves, trees, water, the sea, and the winds. Taking the winds as a starting point, the lecture performance will be based on texts and verses to talk at times seriously and at times jokingly about the weather, in both the modern and ancient Greek sense. The title of the lecture comes from Aristophanes’ “Nephelae” (“The Clouds”) and satirizes the scientific dimension of weather forecasting. Kairos, the Greek term for weather, in antiquity, meant the right time for something, and was a god. Weather forecasting, a science of today that has its roots in the past, will be discussed in relation to ancient divination, Hippocratic medicine, the relationship of winds with breath and inspiration, in a ritual discourse of prediction and propitiation.

“Listening Space” shares in real-time the process of listening, intercepting, and decoding weather satellite data. Using software-defined radio techniques, DIY antennas, and radio frequency sensors, Psarra and Briot will reach out to the open sky to receive and transmit sonic and rhythmic satellite signals. Their goal is to make transmission ecologies graspable and to create a shared experience about the invisible information networks that surround us.

Please note: The satellite signal could become very noisy at times, so people with noise sensitivity might want to use earplugs.

PARALLEL EVENTS

SATELLITE PROJECT

WORKSHOPS

3 137 (Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Kosmas Nikolaou, Paky Vlassopoulou) & Dr. Audrey-Flore Ngomsik CO3(6)5, 2021-2022 1-3 April, 5th floor Foyer, Onassis Stegi Mobile platform: 210x195x65 cm Products: Air Freshener, Body Scrub, Calcium Supplement, Water Purifier Video, digitized 16mm film, 4΄13΄΄ (in loop)

Sophie Dyer and Sasha Engelmann Open Weather 7 & 8 May 2022, Onassis Stegi

Athens-based group 3 137 turn their eco-critique to the charade of green capitalism by parodying and hijacking the faux environmentalism developed in corporate branding. Working on the realization of their collaborative project with green chemist Audrey-Flore Ngomsik, their video teaser is a collection of cryptic eco-actions in the city, such as planting medicinal pills in the soil. It also includes demonstrations of guerrilla approaches to sustainable design, such as repurposing the organic waste of crushed eggshells, orange peel, and the dregs of ground coffee to make alternative products. A QR code leads unwitting passers-by to recipes on a project website, while an enigmatic logo consisting of a scientific formula on a schematic depiction of the globe alludes to the subversive potential of a circular economy existing outside the capitalist system. (Text by Maja and Reuben Fowkes)

CO3(6)5 Brand Design: Elli Roupaki Filmographer: Daphné Hérétakis Performer: Eva Vlassopoulou Sound Designer: Giotis Paraskevaidis Web Developer: Christos Tsamardas Produced by Onassis Stegi as part of the Studiotopia project which is co-funded by the Creative Europe program of European Union

Who or what gains power from satellite imagery, radio technology and meteorological data? open-weather is a feminist experiment in imaging and imagining the Earth and its weather systems using DIY community tools. Co-led by designerresearcher Sophie Dyer and creative geographer Sasha Engelmann, open-weather encompasses a series of how-to guides, critical frameworks and public workshops on the reception of satellite images using free or inexpensive amateur radio technology. For “Weather Engines,” Sophie Dyer and Sasha Engelmann will lead a DIY Satellite Ground Station workshop. By the end of the workshop, each participant will understand the basics of radio communication and have their own working DIY Satellite Ground Station to generate unique weather images from meteorological satellites. The workshop will employ feminist principles to challenge dominant narratives around wireless communication technologies and histories.

PARALLEL EVENTS Hypercomf Unfamiliar Bites: Cooking with alien species 12 May 2022, Οnassis Stegi

Hypercomf Zeroing on Plastic: New generations thinking and designing for alternative packaging 14 May 2022, Onassis Stegi

This workshop will invite a professional chef to experiment with the raw material of non-indigenous edible fish species, demonstrate how to use these fish in cooking, and propose a specially created recipe. These fish are edible and safe to consume but they are not culturally accepted as edible due to their unfamiliarity. When they are caught in fishermen’s nets they are regarded as bycatch since they are not considered to have commercial value. Helping to change this mentality by introducing these fish species to the dining table would greatly benefit the protection of endemic marine biodiversity, part of which is often over-fished. The format will be one of a cooking demonstration on how to prepare and cook the species Pterois miles (Lionfish) and Siganus rivulatus/Siganus luridus in specially prepared recipes that combine them with locally sourced produce. This educational demonstration will be followed by a small tasting of the recipe by the participants.

This workshop will be a creative pop-up lab where participants will be learning, thinking, and designing for a new sustainable approach to consumer goods, packaging, and single use objects. A large amount of pollution littering the oceans is consumer good packaging and single use plastics. In an effort to complete the communication of the problem (which already includes using collected marine waste in a sustainable design proposal) this pop-up lab will attempt to target the plastic problem at its source. This will be a pop-up lab addressed to children, presenting various motivating examples of engineering and design from around the world that address the issue of packaging, from biodegradable bioplastics, reusables, recyclables, edible solutions, new shapes and forms that reduce material use, etc.

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