Weather Forecast

Marijke van Warmerdam achieved her international breakthrough in the mid-1990s after participating at the 1995 Venice Biennale and at documenta X in Kassel in 1997.

Working with installation, film, photography, and sculpture, van Warmerdam has developed a style where the various techniques mutually influence one another. She uses for example her understanding of sculpture in both photography and film, something that manifests itself in how she treats texture and form in the various figures and objects.

Van Warmerdam’s works are often absurdly poetic, addressing serious themes in a playful manner. Time is a central motif, and in Weather Forecast it is the weather itself that symbolizes time. The film takes place in a closed, red room with a wooden floor. A free-standing bathtub is situated in the corner. Steam is seeping into the room. Sunlight breaks in and draws a luminous window with panes on the wall, with an elongated, lopsided part on one side. Rain pours down and fills the tub, so that the water flows over across the floor. A large chunk of ice suddenly falls into the tub, creating a big splash of water. This dense visual imagery heightens the experience of time as nature courses through sun, rain, and ice.

Cinematically, this is underlined by the use of 35 mm film, which has a nuanced materiality. The various “changes of weather” impact on the lighting, while the moisture changes the hues of the red wall and the brown floor. The passage of time is mirrored by the loop, which in theory allows the film’s own passage of time to be repeated forever.