Noticeable Effects/Efectos Perceptibles (2013/2019, collaboration with Susy Bielak)

Noticeable Effects reimagines the Beaufort wind force scale—an empirical measure for weather forecasting—as a meditation on human relationships. Substituting the scale’s original language —the noticeable effects of wind on land and at sea—with the effects of wind on the body and the home, we invite readers to imagine how the psyche is influenced by weather conditions.

In 2019, we translated Noticeable Effects into Spanish and adapted it into a board game as part of Cantos Comunes/Common Songs, an exhibition and series of newly created and recreated Fluxus performances and scores that ran concurrently with the 13th Havana Biennial. In the process, we created a series of scores with specific instructions, inviting players to embody the wind using their bodies and voices. For example, the score for whole gale is to “Grip the table. If you are able, crouch beneath it. Hold its legs down to the floor.” The score for a strong breeze is to “Call down from the window in a new language.”

Collaboration with Susy Bielak

Gameboard, 35” x 38” digital print, with 26 3.5” x 5.5” score cards, and 14-sided die

Graphic design executed by Hannah Haugberg

Translation by Lizabel Mónica

Created in 2013/2019 in context of Jerome Visual Arts Fellowship/13th Havana Biennial/Cantos Comunes, curated by Díaz Lewis in collaboration with Benjamin del Castillo

Published in October 2019 issue of Poetry Magazine