Unable to reach the outside world during the Covid-19 pandemic, Abi Palmer began a year-long process of performing the outside world for her indoor cats Cha-U-Kao and Lola Lola, translating each season into a cat-accessible format.

Using foraged and found materials from local wildlife, Palmer creates DIY performances staged within a series of seasonal boxes in her spare room, engaging with the cats through movement, sensory interaction, and play. Taking a crucial feature from each season, Palmer broke down the elements into four boxes using sensory found objects from local woodlands to reinvent the experience of autumn rain, winter fog, spring sunlight and summer heat. The processes Palmer used to convey each season ranged from literal: the fermentation and distillation of natural materials to recreate the smell of rain; to figurative: Palmer performed the role of the sun by using a disco ball and stitching moss together into a wire mesh surface.

Each film documents Palmer’s meditative process of collecting fragments of nature and assembling the boxes. As she engages with the cats through movement and sensory interaction, the boxes become their primary play and performance space for the films. The accompanying voiceover, written and narrated by Palmer, is a love letter to her cats and the climate, and explores the tensions between what we can and can’t control. The resulting films are a playful meditation on disability, climate, and life that can’t talk back.

The four short films will be released week by week in March 2023, each accompanied by a live talk show held between Palmer and special guests, including J.R. Carpenter, Sop and An(Dre)a Spisto, Gabrielle de la Puente and Nick Murray.

Trailer by Freddie Leyden also available to view on Vimeo and YouTube.

Rain

Rain is the first film from the series, and it takes on a literal interpretation of the autumn season. Palmer goes through a lengthy process of trying to recreate petrichor, the earthy smell which happens when it rains. She gathers up material from the forest floor and creates a rough methodology to distil the smell, soaking it in rainwater under a hunter moon, letting it ferment slightly, and then straining it through a crudely stitched cheesecloth ‘cloud’ into a silver bowl.

Abi Palmer, Abi Palmer Invents the Weather (Rain), 2023
Quad HD video, 12 minutes 4 seconds
Available to view on the World Weather Network website.

Fog

Fog is the second film in the series, which takes on a more abstract interpretation of the winter season. Fog explores Palmer’s own experience of brain fog and increased ill health over winter; clinging to the hope that nothing is permanent and “this too shall pass.”

Abi Palmer, Abi Palmer Invents the Weather (Fog), 2023
Quad HD video, 9 minutes 28 seconds
Available to view on World Weather Network.

Light

Light is the third film in the series and is both a literal and abstract take on the spring season. Palmer thought it would be funny to create spring’s iridescent sunlight using a disco ball. Her cats, of course, adored the dancing reflections the ball beamed over growing patches of moss and living foliage she had stitched into the box. Cha-U-Kao the tabby cat began sleeping underneath the disco ball, occasionally waking to gaze straight up at it, the very picture of a luscious spring day. Conceptually in line with the other three films, Palmer focuses on the idea that there are things we can’t control on this planet and the lightness that comes with letting go.

Abi Palmer, Abi Palmer Invents the Weather (Light), 2023
Quad HD video, 9 minutes 30 seconds
Available to view on the World Weather Network website.

Heat

Summer’s film Heat is the final one in the series. Palmer by this stage in the process has been thinking about the weather, and the climate crisis constantly for a year, and starts to feel unsettled. A hot and frantic mind trying to create and recreate as many small worlds and systems as possible, trying to align humanity in the crisis, reinserting man-made structures such as buildings and cars into our natural reverie. Palmer keeps asking herself the question: what is this project trying to do? Am I here to bear witness and grieve the death of a passing world? Or am I here to resist it?

Abi Palmer, Abi Palmer Invents the Weather (Heat), 2023
Quad HD video, 11 minutes 5 seconds
Available to view on the World Weather Network website.

Images: (above) Abi Palmer. Photo by Faith Aylward, styled by Mia Maxwell; (left) Abi Palmer, Crip Casino, 2018. Installation view, London. Photo: Faith Aylward, styled by Mia Maxwell.

World Weather Network

Running from June 2022 until June 2023, the World Weather Network is a constellation of weather stations set up by 28 arts agencies around the world. 

Artists, writers and their communities share observations, stories, and reflections about their local weather, creating an archipelago of voices and viewpoints. These “weather reports” take many different forms: poetry, fiction, reportage, video diaries, films, photography, podcasts and more. Engaging climate scientists and environmentalists alongside artists and writers, the World Weather Network brings together diverse world views and different ways of understanding the weather across multiple localities and languages. 

worldweathernetwork.org

World Weather Network projects include:

• A Thousand Words for Weather
• Abi Palmer Invents the Weather

Survey

At Artangel, we are always keen to find out what our audiences think of the work we commission, artists we work with and events, exhibitions or experiences we put on. The insight gathered through our surveys allows us to learn how we can adapt the format or subject matter of future projects – ensuring our continued relevancy and enjoyment for the communities we serve. Your honest feedback is invaluable to us as an organisation.

This short survey is about your viewing experience of the Abi Palmer Invents the Weather films, online via YouTube, Vimeo or Tank Magazine. It should only take you 5 minutes to complete.

Take the survey

Image: Still from Abi Palmer, Abi Palmers Invents the Weather (Rain), 2023

Production Credits

A film by Abi Palmer

• Starring Lola Lola and Cha-U-Kao
• Producer: Marina Doritis
• Executive Producer: Michael Morris
• Editor: Rosie Taylor
• Composition and Sound Design: Nick Murray
• Casting Director: Abi Palmer
• Set Fabricator: Emma Leslie
• Colourist: Rosie Taylor
• Title Design: Ollie Palmer and Abi Palmer
• Script Supervisor: Kate Adori
• Studio Assistant: Sam Brain
• Trailers: Freddie Leyden
• Communications: Ava Szajna-Hopgood

Image: Still from Abi Palmer, Abi Palmer Invents the Weather (Fog), 2023

Credits

Commissioned and produced by Artangel. Supported by Artangel’s Guardian Angels.

Artangel is generously supported using public funding by Arts Council England, and by the private patronage of The Artangel International Circle, Special Angels and The Company of Angels.

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