Field Notes For Climate Observers
by Camilla Marrese
Field Notes for Climate Observers is a flawed guide to climate observation and prediction during times of crisis. Its components are a series of images and a 7-step manual: within them, science is a loop of observations, data and simulation models, with seemingly no way out.
How do we tune into the frequencies where climate change can speak to us? How can we read its signs, its spotty signals drenched in noise? As the threat of planetary meltdown comes closer, our senses are fading. Despite all the knowledge that is embedded in the machinery of climate science, we have no shared understanding of how it works. We keep imagining ourselves outside the crisis, as if we could look at it from a safe distance, studying with detachment and control. Yet, we are inside – and it’s an uncanny, hard-to-define place. Where even observation becomes, somehow, a paradox.
Field Notes for Climate Observers has the aim to enhance our sensitivity and agency, as much as our awareness of blind spots and impossibilities. Within the space of the guide, no boundary separates the scientific method from folkloric expression, or DIY-made instruments from embodied perception. They are all weird, ritualistic gestures we make. All attempts at performing control over the uncontrollable.
