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)

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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