Insurgent Meteorologies

Week-long workshop held in the waves – radio waves, sound waves, sea waves – of Arbroath, Scotland. Developed and facilitated in collaboration with local artist, writer and artworker Alison Scott.

Our goal was to build an expanded Earth Station and use the signals it captures to create an experimental ‘weather cast’ to be broadcast on Dundee Radio Club and across the Atlantic on Wave Farm. The week began with an introduction to radio and to each other, before learning about the storied Dundee Satellite Receiving Station that was our inspiration. Mid-week, we were joined by curator/producer Becca Clark and musician/artist Su Shaw from Dundee Radio Club, who guided us as we tuned out of the electromagnetic spectrum and into sound waves. With Becca and Su we practised field recording and listening, assisted by binaural microphones, hydrophones and our own ears. We ended the week by assembling a 30-minute communal weather cast.

What ‘insurgent meteorology’ meant was up to the group and took on different meanings throughout the week. Our starting definition was borrowed from Iranian-American urbanist Faranak Miraftab, who coined the term ‘insurgent planning’ to describe and call for grassroots practices in urban planning and architecture that are transgressive, imaginative and challenging of dominant ideas. We also engaged with the feminist and anticolonial idea that weather and climate are always ‘more-than-meteorological’.

Insurgent Meteorologies Handbook co-authored with Alison Scott.

Listen to the weather cast: Lines of Sight