HACKING THE FUTURE AND PLANET & COOLING STATION
Klaus Schafler, 2011- ongoing
work series of exhibitions, actions in public space, and perfomative lectures
The research and work series Hacking The Future And Planet began with a few site-specific interventions in public space followed by the exhibition Cooling Station being part of the festival Regionale 12 in 2012.
This ongoing work series focuses on facts and fictions of the ambivalent character of interventions in the global climate system, Geoengineering technologies that try to hack the planet to counter climate change. These manipulations cause also lots of dangerous impacts on local and regional weather situations, and the environment and living conditions in general. Weather manipulations on a regional basis attempt to create artificial rain, change the paths of hurricanes, or guarantee sunshine for political appearances at military parades. Like they said in times of the Cold War: “Who controls the weather controls the world.”
The side effects of these lab trials or field tests in the so-called real world are unpredictable and pose numerous ethical and geopolitical questions. Climate scientists in a dilemma between omnipotence and the intention of saving the world.
Interdisciplinary collaborations and the relation between the academic and the non-academic are essential when working in these temporary installed Cooling Station spaces or stages, and sometimes result in pseudoscientific situations of knowledge production.
Klaus Schafler’s project is situated precisely in the border zones of weather research between empiricism, speculation, utopia, fantasies of omnipotence, poetry, risks and potentials of climate and weather manipulation – and in a way it poses the crucial question of ecology: Who can and must make which decisions and when? Above all, Schafler takes up one recurring challenge: to perceive the connection between art and science, art and society, where it has long since entered: in the real world. (…) Therewith, he advocates something that visionaries like Richard Buckminster Fuller already called for in the 1960s: the dissolution of disciplinary boundaries and thus the ivory towers of specialization. According to the architect, philosopher, and utopian, one of the fundamental problems of the ecological development of our planet is that society wrongly believes that specialization is the key to success.
(...)
[Maren Richter, Could we or should we make it work? Art between Science and Research, 2010]
EXHIBITIONS OF THAT WORK SERIES (excerpts)
2014 Halftime in Cooling Jackets, curated by R. Bonisson, The Shed Space, Brooklyn
2014 Measures of saving the world, 4, curated by M. Makovec and A. Lederer, <rotor>, Graz
2013 Hacking the future and planet, at Portable Nation, Maldives Pavilion - 55.Venice Biennale
2012 Global Climacteric, with A. Sheppard and M. Lutyens, curated by KJ Baysa, JAUS,L.A.
2012 Cooling Station, with C. Nägele, invited by M. Richter, Regionale12, Krakau / Murau
2011 Cooling Station, curated by M. Ganzglass, Space for Art and Industry, New York
LECTURES AND TALKS
2018 Creative Climate, Performing lecture at symposium, Birkbeck School of Arts, Centre for Contemporary Theatre, University of London
2017 Climate Control, Performance, seminar and book launch with Ellie Ga, Klaus Schafler and Sverker Sörlin, Dome of Visions, Stockholm
2015 Hypernatural Landscapes of the Anthropocene, Landscape in the arts and cultural sciences, Conference at Kunsthaus Graz / A cooperation between Karl Franzens University Graz, Universalmuseum Joanneum Kunsthaus Graz and the School of Visual Arts NYC
2015 Cooling Overload, Lecture-Performance, Ostrale 015, Dresden
2014 Renewable Futures, Conference on art, science and cultural innovation, Goethe Institute Riga, Liepaja University’s Art Research Lab, Latvia
2011 Cooling Station, lecture, Johnson Design Center, Parsons, The New School, New York
PUBLICATIONS AND TEXTS
2016 NATURALLY HYPERNATURAL III – Hypernatural Landscapes in the Anthropocene
Edited by Sabine Flach and Gary Sherman, Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2016
2016 POLAR - Politik I Theorie I Alltag - , in POLAR # 20: Expertokratie, Berlin
2015 SAVING THE WORLD… FROM A GESAMTKUNSTWERK: THE ART OF STAGING SITUATIONS OF REAL TRANSFORMATIONS, Ovidiu Tichindeleanu in conversation with Klaus Schafler, in IDEA arts & society, Issue # 46, 2015