Talks and performances
“Weather Engines”
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Talks will be conducted in English
Introduction
The opening program of events for the “Weather Engines” exhibition involves a 3-day conference with talks, discussions, and performances. The program has also scheduled workshops during May.
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 (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) and the National Observatory of Athens (Sunday). 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.
Friday 1 April | Onassis Stegi | Upper Stage
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 climate change, extreme events and their impact 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 Khazrik (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 2 April | Onassis Stegi | Upper Stage
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 | 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 | 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)
20:30 | Dennis Dizon for The Forest Curriculum (Bangkok/Berlin/Barcelona): "Closing poetics on sensitivities and intelligences for a more than human world".
Sunday 3 April | National Observatory of Athens
17:00 | “Meteorosophy”, lecture performance by Phoebe Giannisi
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. Weather, in Greek 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.
17:30 | Welcome by Fiori Anastasia Metallinou, Astrophysicist - Public Outreach Officer, Thissio Visitor Center, National Observatory of AthensOpening of the Exhibition and guided Tour with the exhibition curators and artists whose works are hosted at the National Observatory of Athens
19:30 | “Listening Space,” audio outdoors performance by Afroditi Psarra & Audrey Briot
“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
