Lecture performance for Sonic Acts: Leaving Traces

As the weather image grew, Miel’s consciousness expanded, bending to the curvature of the Earth. Far from an out-of-body experience, the feeling was one of being profoundly situated: sandwiched between the sun-warmed Land, particle-laden air, cloud, satellite and cosmos.

Last year, on the first day of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, a network of people operating DIY satellite ground stations around the world captured a collective snapshot of the Earth and its weather systems: a ‘nowcast’ for an undecided future. Tuning into transmissions from three orbiting National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites, volunteers collected imagery and submitted field notes from their geographical locations. Combined, these contributions generated a feminist and fractal image of the earth, and a record of conditions of climate crisis from Buenos Aires to Kinshasa to London.

As open-weather we ask: What does it mean to collectively image the earth, and in doing so, reimagine the planet?

▴ Open-weather performative presentation at Sonic Acts Biennial: Leaving Traces 2022.

▴ When we image the earth, we imagine another. October 2022. Image: Sonic Acts.

▴ When we image the earth, we imagine another. October 2022. Image: Sonic Acts.

Credits

Thank you Olivia Bercowicz for being our voice from the future.

Thank you Teresa Cos for mixing the sound

Thank you Sonic Acts and Mirna Belina for having us.

Thank you to Roos Duijnstee and everyone who helped with the workshop yesterday.

And thank you to Michela Trovato and Zareena Ackbar for all the support around Sonic Acts.