Petko Dourmana: Post Global Warming Survival Kit
Title:
- Post Global Warming Survival Kit
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
- ISEA2009: 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art
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More artworks from ISEA2009:
Venue(s):
Medium:
- Infrared Multimedia Installation, infrared projection, teardrop trailer with handwritten diary, Bakelite speaker, voltmeter, Morse transmitter, balance, hard cookies etc.
Artist Statement:
Set in a world where nuclear winter was implemented as a radical solution to global warming and subsequent flooding, the installation Post Global Warming Survival Kit represents the home of a person, who watches over the sea shoreline in a post-apocalyptic landscape almost devoid of life. The image processing used for the installation is in the near infrared section of the light spectrum, which is invisible for the bare human eye but visible with night vision devices and modified digital cameras or camcorders. This approach is based on the assumption that when much of the sun light has been blocked out from reaching the surface of the Earth (as in the nuclear winter scenario), seeing in infrared becomes the only survival mode. Besides projection, all the lighting in the installation is also in infrared, which produces sensations of emptiness and fullness simultaneously when the visitor walks around the shelter and enters inside. The project fiddles with pseudo-scientific concepts used in mass media, such as nuclear winter and global warming, suggesting them as solutions to each other, and raises the question what the future is to bring and what output of technology, biotechnology and contemporary culture can be utilised for surviving in climate change environment. References to key sci-fi books and movies are deliberately made. A medley of analogue technical devices is found in the shelter. The shelter itself was designed in the first half of the twentieth century as part of an ambitious plan for providing mobility to the masses in Nazi Germany.
The video used in the installation has been filmed on the North Sea coastline, now seriously affected by climate change and before – being the focal point of the Industrial revolution. Thus in the sequence with the loop of the sped up tide, environmental and climate changes converge with the effects of the Industrial revolution. There is one more circle of convergence in the installation: the missing guard of the coastline, replaced by the viewers who become observers of the environment but also of themselves.
