Pumping up water from transparent cisterns, four lo-fi rain machines sporadically turn on to let the water patter down into terracotta bowls. Arranged in layered tiers, these vessels wait for rain like great gaping mouths. And when it finally comes, it’s a release, splashing over the bowls and drizzling onto the floor.
Over time those unglazed pots will crack and disintegrate, leaching sediment back into the water. The exhibition wears its ambiguity confidently, supported by accompanying texts with all sorts of bumf about human’s historic attempts to control weather: infographic diagrams illustrative of nothing and everything; weather as a weapon of war; a beautiful line from Walter Benjamin. We know already that weather is near impossible to control, that stimulating rain somewhere only ends up depriving somewhere else.
Here though, these creaking machines tease an impossible illusion of command. It is a rich, sensory experience to be inside with the rain falling. Outside, cars edge along the wide expanse of Karl-Marx-Allee, but here, perched on rigid silver stools, you feel strangely enclosed. ★★★★
