The Atmosphere: A Guide

Amy Balkin (US)

The Atmosphere: A Guide is a poster-essay visualising the ways in which human beings occupy the present, the past and the future atmospheres, and the accumulated traces of these activities. The guide has drawn on the format of the Cloud Code Chart, a chart created to aid in the interpretation of cloud reports from the International Figure Code published in 1949, which provides a basic introduction for the identification of clouds. The Atmosphere: A Guide is organised by layers of the atmosphere from sea level to the exosphere.

Which atmosphere is it? The biogeochemical or the geopolitical? A global commons or militarised space? Does the difficulty of human occupation of the atmosphere produce a space for projection and speculation? A space of indeterminacy? The Atmosphere: A Guide charts some atmospheric politics and their downward influences.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Amy Balkin is an artist whose work involves land and the geopolitical relationships that frame it. Her projects address legal borders and systems, environmental justice, and the allocation of common-pool resources.