Introduction

In 1953 the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich began to experiment with the Cloudbuster, a device he had created to influence the atmosphere, to make it rain or keep it from raining – according to various reports of that time with great success. The way the Cloudbuster functioned was based on Reich’s theory of the human libido as a universal energy, inherent in living as well as organic matter, the radiation of which he called Orgone – a neologism composed of orgasm and organism.

In May and June of this year Christoph Keller, while in New York as P.S.1 scholar, conducted the re-enactments of Reich’s experiments with his own reconstruction of the Cloudbuster with the aim to create rain – during that time New York experienced the heaviest rainfalls since the beginning of meteorological observation.

The present exhibition is the second part of the re-enactments of the Cloudbuster-experiments. The exhibition space is presented as an observatory where over the first two weeks of the exhibition period experiments are conducted with the aim to keep it from raining in Berlin, a city infamous for its November rain.

The main element is the Cloudbuster, placed on the gallery’s rooftop, which can be remote-controlled from within the gallery space and is filmed by a fisheye video camera. In the exhibition space, a satellite bowl hanging from the ceiling reflects the live projection of the Cloudbuster and the sky above it.

As the experiments are proceeding – the Cloudbuster is operated by Christoph Keller about four hours a day – the whole work will gradually take shape through the accumulation of results.