Weathering Three Storms: Experiments in an Elemental Geohumanities

Abstract

For cultural geographers, weather is primarily known through the body. Cultural geographers employ sensual ethnographies, diaries, interviews and visual methods to understand how weather is differentially felt. Somewhat lacking are cultural geographical accounts of weather as data: how weather is mapped, indexed and modelled with consequences not only for science but also for vernacular weather-worlds. In contrast, a growing set of artistic projects are experimenting with scientific practices that measure, modify, and produce our weather. Taking inspiration from these creative practices, this paper explores the intersection of weather as body, and weather as machine, as part of a current of transdisciplinary work I call the elemental geohumanities. Drawing from international cultural programmes such as the World Weather Network and employing vignettes from the open-weather archive, I advance a critical framework for thinking at the interface of embodied weather and “weather engines” for cultural geography and the geohumanities.