Clouds of Unknowing, 2014
Video, lightboxes, digital prints, headphones, mp3s, books. Newly commissioned by LABoral and Lighthouse
Video Still. Courtesy of the artists
Clouds of Unknowing interrogates changes in global geopolitical weather conditions since September 11. Incorporating Wolkengestalt (a short film they made in 2007) which employs images of cloud formations together with an entry from Goethe’s diary of weather observations -dated September 11, 1819- describing a thunderstorm which rents the clouds, producing a rainbow and clearing the sky, to evoke by seeming contrast the spectre of the twin towers and the endlessly billowing pall of smoke and dust rising from their ruins. Three illuminated lightboxes contain prints of cloud studies by English landscape artist John Constable (a contemporary of Goethe), one of which is dated September 11, 1821. Accompanying the paintings are audio recordings of bucolic natural environments. All is not as it appears, however: the drone sound is in fact a granular resynthesis of fragments of speeches made by US president Barack Obama defending the policy of drone warfare and targeted assassinations.
