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AMY BALKIN

The Atmosphere : A Guide

2013

Biography

 

Amy Balkin's 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. Her works include Public Smog (2006+), which was included in dOCUMENTA (13), and A People's Archive of Sinking and Melting (2012+). She lives in San Francisco, California.

 

 

About the work

 

The Atmosphere: A Guide (2013) is a poster-essay visualizing various ways in which humans occupy present, past, and future atmospheres. Referencing the Cloud Code Chart, another interpretive aid for looking upward, the guide is organized in layers, from sea level to the exosphere. Research for the project included a series of interviews conducted with atmospheric scientists and climate researchers at UC Berkeley, and a field-recording session at a weather balloon launching facility in Oakland, California. The guide attempts to build an argument for another atmosphere, and includes a short essay by Megan Prelinger. 


The poster was commissioned by the Exploratorium, and will be distributed in San Francisco as a large-format, free poster in May 2013. The artist retains all rights, but it may be downloaded as a PDF file. It is presented here for the first time in Canada (in English only).