On January 31, 2023, David Horvitz's book «Წვიმა Rain» was launched during a soirée at Cabaret Voltaire in collaboration with Edition Taube.

There are 64 different terms for rain in the Georgian language. Artist David Horvitz worked with Tbilisi-based curator Elene Abashidze to collect these words. The result is a glossary that describes the subtle differences in how water can fall from the sky. The wealth of expressions for a single natural phenomenon also makes visible what we stand to lose from the effects of the climate crisis, when the variety of expressions for rain no longer apply. This work was created on the occasion of the exhibition «The Palace of Concrete Poetry» at the Writers' House of Georgia in Tbilisi (September 9 – October 9, 2022). The artist's book «Წვიმა Rain» contains the entire glossary and is published by Edition Taube in an edition of 1000 unique copies, and a special edition printed with Georgian rainwater.

The book was designed by Jan Steinbach and can be bought on edcat.net.

The fact that this book was presented for the first time at Cabaret Voltaire makes sense in many ways. Artists' books were important objects for Dadaists to help developing a global network and share their ideas on art internationally. The book «Წვიმა Rain» also reflects the tone and use of language, as the Dadaists did with their sound poems and simultaneous poems. The Georgian letters are spread across the pages like a concrete poem, while the phonetic translation and the English explanation are always set the same.
Each word in Georgian is accompanied by an English definition or translation, revealing the culturally determined differences of language.

On the occasion of this soirée, Nina Kunz read introductory thoughts on the weather, which we are kindly allowed to share.

_________________________________

Weather Report by Nina Kunz:

I am bad with numbers. I can’t remember birthdays. Or phone numbers. But there is one date I will never forget: July 13, 2021.

Because: On July 13, 2021, a storm swept over Zurich – in a way like I never experienced before. I am sure: everyone who lives in the city knows exactly what I am talking about.

I woke up shortly before two o'clock in the morning and thought my bookshelves had collapsed. But then I realized that the noise wasn’t coming from my living room. It was coming from the sky.

So, I got up and walked into the kitchen. In disbelief, I stared out the window and saw rain. But it wasn't drops. It looked more like a monster moving slowly through the street. The lantern was shaking. The sky was purple. I thought: this is the end of the world.

Of course, I always knew that weather could be extreme. Even before that. For example, I knew that during Hurricane Harvey the rainfall over Houston was so strong that the city sank by a couple of centimeters. But I had never experienced anything like this so-called downburst over Zurich.

The next day I read in the newspaper that almost 1500 trees had been destroyed. I saw photos of trees lying on top of cars, crushing them like bugs. I saw photos of a church clock with bent hands. I read that bricks were torn off from roofs and that they had counted 2700 lightning strikes.

That day something changed. The weather, to me, was no longer something I talked about during small talk. It seemed wrong to remark: It's been raining a lot, hasn't it? Ever since that day I keep looking up at the sky – thinking: I am worried. Have the clouds always been like this? And the sun? How about the storms? When did they start to feel threatening – in an almost existential way?

The scientist Friederike Otto writes in her book Furious Weather that she, too, has noticed that people have started to talk differently about the weather. Again and again, she explains, she overhears conversations where people ask: Is this still normal?

Otto, I should probably add, is the director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, and according to her research, we are, in fact, the first generation of humans to experience different weather than our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.

Of course, that's terrible. But at the same time, Otto hopes that the changing weather will make us realize how dire the situations is. Because we, especially in Zurich, tend not to think about the climate crisis. Instead, we like to pretend it only affects the future. Or the Marshall Islands.

And while we're at it: Otto is also – which is find fascinating – the co-founder of a new branch of research called attributions sciences. Her goal is to attribute specific whether events to climate change. I always thought this was impossible. But apparently, they are discovering models that allow us to figure out if, for example, the rain during Hurricane Harvey was made more likely by the greenhouse effect. Or not.

The weather, I guess, is changing. And sometimes I wonder if what we're seeing in the sky today will soon be a relic. After all, the rule of thumb concerning the climate crisis is: dry places get drier, wet places get wetter.

When I heard that there was a book coming out that collects 64 different terms for rain in the Georgian language, I thought, Oh – this must be the climate-crisis-equivalent to the endangered species list! I'm not sure whether to find this terribly sad. Or wonderfully poetic.