A certain state of exhaustion
Trinity Square Video
November 8, 2019 - January 28, 2020
Curator : Karina Iskandarsjah
In the last five decades, the term “anthropogenic cloud” was coined by meteorologists to describe cloud formations that are created by human-induced sources of condensation such as aircraft engines, geothermal power plants, cooling towers and smokestacks. While these artificial meteorological forms are largely accidental byproducts of industrialization, humans have also made deliberate efforts to claim and master the skies by engineering weather.
The hubristic desire to manipulate and domesticate weather patterns (ie. through cloud seeding, a process discovered in 1946 by Vincent Schaefer, an American chemist employed by General Electric) generally stems from anxieties surrounding the threat of ecological crisis. Scientific research is being conducted on aerosols that could be sprayed into the atmosphere from high altitudes so as to increase the reflective quality of clouds, thus preventing sun rays from penetrating the ozone layer, forcibly cooling the Earth as a result. Many dangers, beyond ecosystems collapse, manifest themselves as a result of these technological endeavors -- weaponization of the biosphere, increased food precarity due to droughts and storms, etc. A greater urgency prevails in knowing and perceiving the signs of our changing atmosphere.
A certain state of exhaustion gathers a functioning hygrothermograph that remains attuned to the warming conditions of its contained surroundings (the vitrine space), a silk photographic print, and a looping video combining found historical footage of Schaefer’s experiments with images of smoke spewing from a clear tube, accelerated to exhaustion by the artist’s breath.
