Capturing Chaos: A Climate Scientist and Performance Artist Discuss Why They Recreate Weather Events, Aki Sasamoto and Nick Lutsko, δημοσίευση στο Art in America [14/3/2023]
Once a subject of small talk, strange weather has evolved into a matter of urgent concern, with apocalyptic undertones. Sculptor, performance artist, and Yale School of Art assistant professor Aki Sasamoto has recently been reproducing various weather events at small scale; the Japanese artist says these experiments help her inhabit the space between chaos and control. In a 2020 performance at St. Mark’s Church in Lower Manhattan, Sasamoto used props to act out various weather events that served as metaphors for aging and transition. Climate scientist Nick Lutsko, an assistant professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, similarly makes models of various weather events, though by different means and for the purpose of understanding climate patterns. To compare notes on their respective approaches to re-creating weather, the two met on Zoom, where they discussed their shared fascination with the elusiveness of extreme events.