Weather Engines

The limits of reducing time/the weather to quantitative data and the neurotic treatment of meteorological data refer to the perception of the weather by the subject using media.Thus we introduce the term “neurotic” to describe a psychological process in which what we hate and what we repulse becomes what we really are looking for (or desire). And this happens in a repetitive mode. We are repeatedly looking for quantitative data, numbers and degrees describing the upcoming weather conditions, though in deep it is constantly hateful to do so. We like what we hate and keep on looking desperately for the weather news. The question being raised by my two site-specific works is: Can we reach to an experiential involvement to the physical aspects of the weather through our sense of things instead of an approach through information and calculation data? Affection and synesthesia are the means proposed by my works to get to be part of weather phenomena and the site they take place. Let us assume that this could happen through the mediation of temporal sculpture objects installed as parasites to the tremendous physical appearance of objects on the site (in situ).

I would prefer the visitors to rather experience the site of the Acropolis and Filopappou hills through the two installations than claim an aesthetic value of the works by themselves. The works  point to the surrounding objects in the landscape as agents of the weather. The two objects, a plum tree and the Parthenon temple  host the weather and the two works, the Aerographs and the Barometer mediate to produce a feeling of the weather’s presence embodied in the solid temple and in the voids of the tree.

Aerographs

My first suggestion is: Look at the plum tree, come close and have an experience of its presence and its gentle movement in the blowing wind. The “Aerographs” are reeds hanging from the tree and point to the branches’ movement by drafting it on plates of sand. A composite experience of the weather around the tree  addresses the affective perception of the wind and the weather rather than their raw calculation in numbers and degrees.

Barometer

My second suggestion is: Look at the Parthenon standing in front of you through the “Barometer” apparatus (“Baros” in Greek means “weight”). You are not obliged to see the building as a cultural object with its intense symbolic weight. You could rather feel it as matter —that is marble stone— rising up vertically against the weight of its physical substance through weather and geological time.

curated by Daphni Dragona  and Jussi Parikka

 Stegi

Onassis Foundation

Athens Observatory 2022

 

 

Photos credits:
Penelope Gerasidou
Stelios Tzetzias