Can we control the weather? Or, do we need to get better again at reading it for ourselves, rather than relying on technology? These are the sorts of questions the work of Culture 101 guest, artist and researcher Chris Berthelson raises.
Originally from Tamaki Makaurau Auckland, Chris is now based in Matsuyama in Japan where as an Associate professor at Ehime University, doing artistic research as part of the Japanese Government's weather control project, Moonshot Goal 8.
Moonshot Goal 8 has an aim of creating a society safe from extreme winds and rain, by controlling the weather by 2050. It includes projects, says Chris, like fleets of planes or drones to control typhoons, suppressing rainfall with wind farms, a one kilometre by one kilometre ocean curtain hoisted into the sky by kites to suppress rainfall, dry ice cloud-seeding, and a fleet of urban fans that can roam a city.... The kind of ideas perhaps that were once considered the realm of artists.
A key question for Chris in all this is "how can we live well with 'bad' weather?" He's exploring how playing with the weather creatively might see us take more collective ownership, and be more educated ahead of the extreme weather we are told is coming.
Chris's work is by no means restricted to the weather. In Tāmaki Makaurau he focussed on the impact on quality of life of community's playfully and creatively sharing their own resources and skills. With his Distributed Resource Centre, he undertook 11 projects over five years in and around the Mairangi Bay Arts Centre, before Covid hit.
The projects remind us of the creative faculties we have to share, creates spaces and make do with what we've got when we're young. "I think most people when they're young jump in puddles," he muses "and sometime we stop jumping in puddles and I don't know when that line is. I don't know when I stopped jumping in puddles."
Chris Berthelsen is co-presenting an introduction to his recent work with weather in Pōneke Wellington on August 6 as part of Critical Signals. That's a three month pop up public space that's just opened for talks and workshops focussed on practicing and learning new responses to the disruptions of the future.
