Storm Signals
We live in a perpetual storm—ecological, political, cultural, personal—and must learn to survive. While modernity tries to outsource and displace “bad weather,” always keeping the darkness at bay or in the next neighborhood or over the wall, we believe we must learn to live with inclement weather of all kinds. Concrete tetrapods, which form coastal breakwaters, represent a way of engaging turbulence: irregular assemblies of spiky shapes dissipate force rather than flatly resisting the sea.
Storms bring wreckage and loss, however, they also produce some unique effects: unexpected camaraderie or alliances; the experimental mobilization of logistics, on small and large scales; and the occurrence of the surreal. Across the coastal US during storm season, “hurricane parties” bring friends and neighbors together to cook perishable foods to clean out the freezer in advance of a power outage, wait out the weather, and also, to dance—who might kiss in the dark? We are inspired by sea otters, who tangle up in kelp with one other, to stay close while sleeping in the ocean currents.
In 2019, The Night Gallery presents Storm Signals, a series of film, video, and installation works which use new forms of representation to render visible turbulent and changing conditions across scales and disciplines: from the interpersonal to the virtual.
Schedule
May 17–June 20
Loa's Promise
Joshua A. Dawson
June 21–July 18
Virality & Impermanence
Maggie Lee
July 19–August 15
To the Lighthouse
Olive Ouyang and Nathaniel Gillette
August 16–September 19
Privacy Storms
AC33 (María Esteban Casañas, Vivek HV, Julian Siegelmann)
September 20–October 17
Failure
Emma Mendel and Brad Cantrell
October 18–November 14
Phantom Fictions
CO – G (Elle Gerdeman and Kyle Coburn)