Air 6: Air Conditioning

07/23/24 • 49 min

Temperature regulation has become a deeply political issue in our boiling world. In this episode, we speak with London-based artist Susan Schuppli about her work on the violence of temperature and the inequities of climate control, and with architectural historian Joseph Siry about the role of air conditioning in twentieth- and twenty-first century building design. We ask what it takes to claim universal rights for livable temperatures and how contemporary art can help recalibrate existing ideas about comfort and convenience.

For more information visit: https://artofinterference.com/

For more information visit: https://artofinterference.com/

Previous Episode

Air 5: Smog

“I am working very hard, although this morning... I was terrified to see that there was no fog, not even a wisp of mist: I was prostrate, and could see all my paintings done for, but gradually the fires were lit and the smoke and haze came back.” When Monet wrote this in a letter to his wife in 1900, the term “smog” had not yet been coined. But the artist was certainly describing the eerie beauty of polluted fog. In today’s episode, Tori and Emma speak with artist Kim Abeles about her Smog Collectors series and talk to atmospheric scientist Anna Lea Albright about the surprising ties between Impressionism and climate change.

For more information visit: https://artofinterference.com/

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Air 7: Oxygen

Our air and atmosphere require 21% oxygen to sustain life as we know it. Human-induced climate change has put this ratio under pressure. In this episode of Art of Interference, we feature Santiago Sierra’s work 52 Canvases and Ted Chiang’s short story Exhalation as two recent interventions that draw our attention to the precarity of the air around us. We talk with curator Meredith Malone about the strange beauty of Sierra's toxic images and we discuss what can be learned from marine mammals about the future of oxygen on our planet.

For more information visit: https://artofinterference.com/

Art of Interference - Air 6: Air Conditioning

Transcript

S2E6 AIR CONDITIONING

Transcript

LK = Lutz Koepnick
ML = Maren Loveland
TH = Tori Hoover
SS = Susan Schuppli
JS = Joseph Siry
YF = Yuriko Furuhata

Introduction

LK:

Earlier in April, a team of scientists ran some experiments in the Bay area shooting aerosols into the air. They were rightly worried that the Global North would fail to meet its goal to reduce carbon emissions and halt planetary warming. What they were trying to do is