Mai and Kateřina Adamová Linhartová
The How to Talk to the Weather Demons collective exhibition focuses on water in the context of climate change. In Slavic mythology, weather demons (pl. płanetnicy, en. weather demons) were creatures responsible for atmospheric phenomena—especially rainfall and storms. In our day, when weather anomalies have become the new norm and the climate crisis makes itself felt in consecutive floods and droughts, people feel an increasing urge to control nature.
We see salvation in technology and progress, believing in it as blindly as we once believed supernatural creatures had control over the weather. Being independent of humanity’s needs and whims, the weather has been the subject of beliefs and rituals since the dawn of time. Negotiating with gods and demons through dances, spells, and prayers for the sun or rain to appear was eventually replaced by technological experiments. For centuries, humanity has explored the limits and capabilities of affecting atmospheric conditions.
An example of such attempts is the hail cannon, whose use goes back to 1895, though shooting into the clouds was practiced in Europe as far back as the 14th century, owing to a conviction that sound changes the weather. Excitement over the capabilities of technology to impact the weather led to the mass production of cannons and numerous scientific conferences in the 19th century. The present surge in research on cloud seeding to cause rain is conducted mainly in the United Arab Emirates and China, used as propaganda by dictatorships to “chase away” clouds during their leaders’ speeches and by private companies selling these cannons as the best way to protect crops or greenhouses.
This is in spite of the fact that the efficacy of hail cannons has never been scientifically proven, and cloud-seeding has been proven effective only in special laboratory conditions. At the same time, plenty of research has shown that what really has a serious impact on precipitation, particularly in the depths of continents, is hundreds of kilometers of forests and wetlands, and not specialty technologies whose efficacy remains disputed. No one believes in the power of weather demons or other supernatural creatures anymore; there is nothing to negotiate with, yet we keep counting on a miracle, convinced that “things will just work out.”
The exhibition aims to call attention to the weave of phenomena, to recall that the circulation of water on Earth is a complex system, and all interference sets off a chain of often unpredictable consequences. The artists raise such issues as melting of the icebergs, access to drinking water, weather modification, and social issues that go hand-in-hand with water: inequality, crime, and corruption. Their works conclusively show that we cannot take a “business as usual” attitude to the climate crisis, counting exclusively on technological progress to save us from the droughts and hurricanes. In fact, we need to change our extractivist approach, focused on economic growth whatever the cost.
There is a flip side to this situation as well; not everything ascribed to the climate crisis is directly tied to it. The climate catastrophe has become a convenient alibi, a cover for industry and business to keep on ravaging the environment. The damage arising from exploitation of resources is blamed on climate change. And so, for instance, the low water level in the Vistula river in Poland is closely connected to the mass extraction of sand from the bed of the river, flash floods—like the one from 2024 that badly affected Olomouc region—are caused by the clear-cutting of forests (especially in mountain terrains) and the widespread concrete-mania, the increased salinity of rivers comes from mining dumps, and some lakes (such as Ostrowskie Lake near Przyjezierze, Poland) dried up as a direct result of the nearby surface mining.
The exhibition How to Talk to the Weather Demons was first presented under the Polish title Jak rozmawiać z płanetnikami between 13/9 and 10/11/2024 at SIC! BWA Wrocław in Poland. The current show is its second iteration with new artworks and new time and spatial context.