In I am Anthus, a video work by Monica Papi and Özgür Demirci, the artists take images from Google Earth to turn public spaces that have been decimated to become inaccessible mines, dams, and nuclear facilities into a bird’s-eye view journey. The anthus makes the journey, pointing to the disappearance of its names as it goes up and down these soon-to-be-destroyed areas (the subspecies of the anthus bird are called by the words mountain, water, meadow, and tree in Turkish). The work is located in the tension between seeing and knowing. Monica’s words and Özgür’s images do not complement each other. On the contrary, they bring out the ineffability of ecocide as well as the gaps and the wounds of verbal and visual language. We look but do not know; we see but do not stop.

This text is part of our ongoing series that addresses artistic strategies to measure, report, fabulate, and tell stories about the weather, air flows, circulation, and other high to low pressure aspects of our practices and cities. Commissioned for the World Weather Network, a constellation of weather stations located across the world, and with the invitation of SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey, the series asks: how do artists respond to ideas of change, crisis, and future, focusing on various elements of the weather as an embodiment at the intersection of bodies, peoples, and landscapes? –Merve Ünsal