Weather Gestures
Leah Beeferman
March 2021
Press Release:
(Loss of
wind and weather,
light and scale,
sensory overload;
of sound,
temperature,
and stories I am not telling you;
of non-visible wavelengths,
discomfort and disorientation,
distance,
etc.)
I visited two scientific research stations: one in the Arctic and one in the Amazon. I wanted to know what emptiness and density — concepts important in quantum physics, which studies the smallest of scales — meant on Earth, at planet scale. I was looking for extremes, and I found them: in the forms of endless summer light, resilient low-growing Arctic plants, and a recurring silence, aside from the wind and the waves on the lake. I found them in the forms of heavy rainforest humidity and thunderstorms, intense equatorial sun, and the endlessly detailed buzz of more living inhabitants than I could ever have imagined.
Each place is a tiny region within its larger region, but micro becomes macro very quickly. My sense of scale shifts dramatically. I stand on a planet and see it at work. There are many forces in play: most noticeably, the weather, the water, and what grows. These forces shape one another, and forces make forms (weather gestures).
Some forms are visible. I look at them, record them. They change. I look at them again, record them again, draw with them. This is a method of engagement, of relating. I make each image, each video, to look carefully. But the results are slippery, elusive. Each frame hangs in balance, hovering around resolve.
There can be no one way to know these places: no truly accurate system of description or method of depiction. Planets exceed depiction, description. Scale — multi-dimensional, multi-sensorial, planetary scale — dwarfs the possibilities of representation. So I leave these places to be unrepresentable, as they are.
I am a visitor and I know little. My grounding, and my perspective, are my own. I can trust them for certain things only, so remember that you are seeing what I saw. But I do know that emptiness is not empty, it is dense. And I do know that density is beyond my true understanding. So I seek out the forms, the visible forms, and there are many. Seemingly endless possible forms, forms of possibility. I want to celebrate these forms, so I leave out the rest. Maybe it gives me hope.
Kilpisjärvi, Arctic Finland, June 2019
Tiputini, Ecuadorian Amazon, October 2019
Providence, Northeastern United States, March 2021
