The work Nubi Tempora is a collaboration between Gerhard Lang and the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD, the German Meteorological Service) in Offenbach am Main.

Ursula Panhans-Bühler

In the darkroom of seeing clouds

Modern image technology from photography to electronic rendering withdraws the hand from the process of picture recording. Yet in his Zeichnen des Sehens der Wolke (Drawing the process of seeing a cloud) Gerhard Lang relies on the hand as the motive agent of his imaging. This offers a protocol of the process of seeing the cloud, but without this being controlled by the eye during transcription. The eye does not intervene: culturally biased interference, as happens when switching focus between the motif and the drawing, is precluded. [...]

[...] Whereas meteorologists soberly record the dynamic inner life of the clouds in the time sequence of their measurement data, Gerhard Lang’s drawing of the process of seeing the cloud is regulated by eye and hand as “nervous encompassing organs” (Aby Warburg). Even by keeping the gaze riveted to the cloud formation the outcome is a psychic-electric rendering of the process of seeing into an image that is blindly executed by the hand as a kind of organic Geiger counter.

[Excerpt from the essay In the darkroom of seeing clouds, in: Nubi Tempora. Cloud Landscapes, Publisher: The German Meteorological Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD) , 2017]

Ursula Panhans Bühler is emeritus professor of the history of modern art at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. She was one of the founding members of the Society of the Shadow Accelerators.

Stephan Weyer-Menkhoff

Cloud catalogue

Clouds are not simply clouds. Either they are aerosol particles and water droplets whose accumulation is legible in a series of data; or they are part of the landscape whose formation only becomes visible in a drawing. Clouds are not simply clouds but always need to be rendered accessible through a particular action. The act of approaching a cloud involves alignment. Writing and drawing both plot a line, each in its own way. Writing encrypts something, while a drawing reveals. Encrypted writing has to be penetrated, a drawing by contrast can be observed by mimetically following the lines. Reading and seeing are the two ways of making clouds accessible. Reading rows of data affords access to the cloud. Rain or sunshine can be forecast. The cloud is kept at a distance. With a drawing it is different. Through drawing, as too through the mimetic act of following the lines of the drawing, the separation between observer and cloud diminishes. This is taken further still by the unorthodox Visus Signatus method of drawing, in which the eye is never taken off the object. Hence the gaze privileges the observed cloud over the drawing. In the mimesis of perception, of seeing via drawing or seeing via tracing a drawn motif, the cloud is ingested into one’s own body in all its agility and vitality. [...]

Excerpt from the essay Cloud Catalogue, in: Nubi Tempora. Cloud Landscapes, Publisher: The German Meteorological Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD) , 2017

Stephan Weyer-Menkhoff is professor in the department of Protestant Theology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, specialising in the fields of aesthetics and didactics.

Illustrations:

Ill. I: NUBI TEMPORA II. Visus Signatus. The drawn seeing of the clouds above the Rhine-Main region. Graphite on paper, 52 x 92 cm, drawn on the roof of the Deutscher Wetterdienst between 12 midday and 3 p.m., 24 April 2017

Ill. II: NUBI TEMPORA II. Visus Mathematicus. While Gerhard Lang was drawing the process of seeing the cloud on the roof of the Deutscher Wetterdienst, in the data centre on the floor below raw data was being collated that had been transmitted by radar, satellites and weather stations in the Rhine-Main region. This raw data represents all the meteorological information about the conditions generating the clouds that Lang was looking at all the time he was drawing. Both aspects of the work Nubi Tempora show the same phenomena, but never directly and each in different form. Offset print, 52 x 92 cm, 2017

Ill. III: On the roof of the Deutscher Wetterdienst. While drawing the process of seeing the clouds above the Rhine-Main region Gerhard Lang’s gaze is uninterruptedly directed at the sky. Photo: Vanessa Jarworski

Ill. lV: In the data centre at the Deutscher Wetterdienst. Meteorologist Christoph Müller and mathematician Wolfgang Löser are in the process of ordering the collected raw data. Photo: Gerhard Lang

For more information about Gerhard Lang's Visus Signatus drawings:
- Seeing the Mountains and Seeing the Clouds on the Furka Pass
- The Whitestone Pond Series
- Visus Signatus. Seeing the Clouds. Oil Pastel Wor
- Visus Signatus. Seeing my face
- Visus Signatus. Gerhard Lang draws the process of seeing the moon
Thanks:
Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD)
Hessen State Ministry for Higher Education
Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main
Edith and Hans Fritz Lang
Gestaltungsbüro 29. April
Helmut Aebischer
Peter Barozzi
Tom Westerdale

Translation: Matthew Partridge