ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, the ocean was a singular body of water that provided artistic and curatorial nourishment to the artists and curators who engaged in thinking with it. In this chapter, under the collective title of fog, artists use fog to sense water differently and to develop an awareness of the climate crisis as internalised through embodied misty encounters and social formations. The hydro-artistic method of ‘misting’ is the artistic relationality between vaporous bodies of water and participation-based artistic actions. In understanding misting as a hydro-artistic method, I draw on the writing of theorist Ifor Duncan’s concept of ‘Occult Meteorology’ that sees mist as an embodied material which carries imprints of the technological and toxic age of the climate crisis. In the Hydrocene, the hydro-artistic method of misting is defined centrally by the work of distinguished artist and mist maker Fujiko Nakaya as well as Australian artists Emily Parsons-Lord and Janet Laurence alongside Diller Scofidio + Renfro. In the Hydrocene, fog is used to challenge audiences towards ‘reorientation’ as an embodied and performative experience, one that reorients audiences to recognise themselves within the hydrological and hydro-social cycle.
