Abi Palmer Invents the Weather
in collaboration with Lola-Lola and Cha-U-Kao
Comissioned by Artangel.
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 THE WEATHER: 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. For tickets, click here.
