Of all the implications of external factors on our bodies, pollution and climate are perhaps the most urgent.
Weathering Ports: Sensing, Performing, and Acting Bodies by Yeon Sung 연성 investigates the relationship between the human body and the context of Maasvlakte (an artificial industrial zone within the Port of Rotterdam) treating pollution and pollutants as material elements through the use of a DIY apparatus of sensors mounted onto a bicycle.
The concept of “Weathering” was proposed by Australian feminist environmental humanities researchers Astrida Neimanis and Rachel Loewen Walker. Weather is more than just a meteorological phenomenon; it encompasses socio-political and cultural impacts on the body. Neimanis and Walker extend Stacey Alaimo’s idea of transcorporeality by incorporating temporality to conceptualize the importance of an embodied understanding of the transformative phenomenon of climate change.
During the summer session of 2023 at V2_Unstable Media Lab, Sung prototyped a DIY apparatus mounted onto a bicycle. It offers a critical perspective on the use of pollution-exposed sites as cyclists’ hotspots. She engages in a four-hour cycling performance through Massvlakte, wherein the human body metamorphoses into a bio-archive of polluting weather.
Through performance as a process of bodily experience and embodiment of Maasvlakte’s pollution phenomena, the artist directly engages in a process of “being-becoming.” Here, the human body assimilates into the fabric of nature and meteorology.
This amalgam of wind direction, wind speed, toxic gas levels, and human metrics influenced by the weather—such as body temperature and heartbeat—converges into a real-time auditory symphony emanating from resonant horn speakers.
Weathering Ports aims to transcend the dichotomy of nature-culture and human-environment oppositions by becoming weather-bodies, embodying the role of artists who sense, perform, and act upon polluted weather.
CREDITS
Co-production: V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media *Credit: -Production design: Heejung Kim -System design, sound design: Sima Kim
BIO
Yeon Sung 연성 is an artist-researcher based in Rotterdam and South Korea. Her artistic practice is centered on the critical examination of colonial dynamics at the intersection of sociopolitics, environment, and technology through the lens of non-human beings. Weaving a non-Eurocentric narrative with DO-IT-YOURSELF (DIY) tactics through accessible technology and bodily engagement, she experiments artistic practice as a means of decolonial method.
This project is realized as part of “The Body is a Movement”, a project by Onomatopee and Baltan Laboratories.
During Design Week Public Program, Onomatopee and Baltan Laboratories will present the project with a talk on rethinking the importance of the body (and corporeity) in the contemporary cult of hyper-productivity.