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Klima
(2016)
Einer der ältesten Gegenstände der Zukunftsprognose ist das Wetter. Als "Bühne der Götter", von der aus sich gleichermaßen Strafgerichte, Prüfungen und Geschenke über die Menschen ergießen, ist Wetter das Paradigma einer ungewissen Zukunft, an die sich gerade darum bestimmte Wissensformen und Praktiken der Prädiktion knüpfen: Wetterorakel, Lostage, Almanache mit Wetter-Regeln oder auch Prophezeiungen wie die von den sieben fetten und sieben mageren Erntejahren, die Joseph dem Pharao weissagt (1. Mose 41). Während die Antike diesen Techniken mantischer Wettervorhersage eine große Zuverlässigkeit zuspricht, ist mit der Verwissenschaftlichung modernen meteorologischen Wissens die empirisch belastbare Vorhersage kurz- und mittelfristiger Wetterereignisse außerordentlich schwer geworden. Anders das Klima: "Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get". Klima ist Durchschnitt, Dauer und Regelmäßigkeit, Wahrscheinlichkeit und Wiederkehr: der Zyklus der Jahreszeiten, die Erwartbarkeit von Niederschlägen, Temperaturen und Winden, die Häufigkeit bestimmter Wetterverhältnisse in einer gegebenen Region. Es bewegt sich in einem Raum der Extrapolationen, Wahrscheinlichkeiten und Durchschnittsbildungen zwischen Einzelereignissen, deren kontingentes Auftreten in statistische Häufigkeit umgerechnet wird. So wird aus Regentagen eine bestimmte Niederschlagsmenge, aus Wärme- und Kälteperioden werden Temperaturkurven, aus desaströsen Stürmen jahreszeitlich wechselnde Windperioden.
Over the six months in which Vajiko Chachkhiani's "Living Dog Among Dead Lions" was exhibited at the Georgian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, heavy rain was pouring inside the installation. This artificially generated process provokes thoughts on the nature of the here and now as well as of the afterlife and of the future appearance of the hut's water-sensitive insides. Eventually, the spaces and furniture exposed to rain and water stagnation will begin to rot and disintegrate, and mould and moss might grow over them. Its viewers feel caught between what they see and what they hope to see; between their perceptions and expectations, in an exceptional time zone where 'natural' weathering is being performed as a subject of meditative observation.
Preface
(2020)
The intensifying ecological devastation of the planet is being registered across scientific disciplines and activist, artistic, or more broadly cultural endeavours in ways that rethink the temporal dimensions of a catastrophe that can no longer be considered 'looming'. In many political contexts - trying to get scientists heard, mobilizing state power and international agreements to curb the extractivist rapaciousness of global capitalism - it might still seem essential to create a sense of urgency, of a rapidly closing interval, last chance, now or never. Yet taking stock not only of the planetary sum totals of global climate change but its present local manifestations, the devastations of neocolonial extractivism, the irreversible extinctions of countless species, destruction of ecotopes on land and in the sea, has produced a growing awareness that in many crucial senses, it is 'too late' - that the time can no longer be given as 'five minutes to midnight' but has moved a lot closer to the dead of night, whether this is being regarded primarily as a question of the cumulative loss of biodiversity as part of what is now known as the 'sixth mass extinction' or as the approach of several 'tipping points' of global climate change, such as the current ice sheet disintegrations in the polar regions, the greenhouse gas release triggered by the loss of permafrost, and irreversible desertifications. The complexion of ecology, over these last years, has turned from juicy green to dark and brittle. The most decisive recent interventions, while acknowledging the overwhelming pessimist thrust of ecological thought, have tried to use a more complex, more differentiated account of the temporality of environmental ruination in order to reflect on the diminished possibilities for life in these ruins while avoiding familiar registers both of science fiction dystopias and self-healing planets.