How to Talk to the Weather Demons. An Exhibition on Water, Weather, and Climate

In Slavic mythology, the weather demons (płanetnicy) are creatures responsible for the atmospheric conditions, particularly precipitation and storms. Today, with the climate crisis making itself felt in floods and droughts and weather anomalies becoming the new norm, people feel a growing need to control nature. The collective exhibition called How to Talk to the Weather Demons focuses on water as a life-giving substance and a common good we are destroying.

The works presented at this exhibition show the complexity of the climate crisis as it concerns weather changes and practices connected to water. Using a variety of media—glass and ceramic objects, a video, a game, fabrics, and photography—the artists raise such issues as river regulation, access to drinking water, weather modification, and social issues that go hand-in-hand with water: inequality, crime, and corruption. After all, water is not just a basis of all life, it is also a tool in conflicts and a constitutive part of many rituals and customs (religious and secular).

There have been varied attempts to repair the catastrophic effects of exploiting the environment, resulting from treating water as a resource to be monetized. There are two main approaches. On the one hand, we have the dream of restoring it to its idyllic original state through renaturalization. On the other, techno-optimism, engineering the environment, and faith in the power of progress. Both these roads lead us nowhere unless we recall that the circulation of water on Earth is a complex system, and all interference sets off a chain of often unpredictable consequences.

The exhibition provides no answers. Its aim is more to sketch out the problems and call attention to the weave of phenomena taking place before our eyes, both in nature (the hydrological cycle) and in politics, social life, economics, farming, and technology. The “bandages” we apply here and there to address the most urgent problems sometimes cause more misfortunes. Local decisions can affect people thousands of miles away. Every act of interference triggers a chain reaction. No one believes in the power of weather demons or other supernatural creatures anymore, there is no one to negotiate with, yet we keep counting on a miracle, conviced that “things will just work out.”

Sensory and allergy warnings:
– „Sluice” installation gives off a powerful smell of rubber, which some may find irritating
– part of the „Sluice” installation is oyster shells. Touching them or breathing in their particles could cause an allergic reaction
– one of the rooms is darkened – the only source of light is from a projection