Meteoranxiety — pre traumatic stress about climate change that hasn’t happened yet

More support for snowflakes.

Are you feeling stressed about imaginary man-made climate change that hasn’t even happened yet? Thanks to taxpayer funds, there is a virtual reality event that may help you (or not). The Bureau of Meteoranxiety is on in Melbourne this week. This experimental, untested technique doesn’t look like it gets to the nub of the problem.

If victims spent 45 minutes with a friendly skeptic instead, they could be cured for life. Where is the grant for that?

Image credit: Michael Tartaglia

Are you feeling stressed about the end of the world? If yes, you might want head to this Next Wave event. An immersive live art experience incorporating VR technology, Bureau of Meteoranxiety by Perth-based artists Alex Tate and Olivia Tartaglia will allow participants to work through their fears of climate change by exposing them to “experimental visual therapies and sensory remedies” and providing “new language and coping strategies to help stay above the metaphorical and literal flood line”.

Blindside: Bureau of Meteoranxiety.

Book your tickets for Melbourne (or pick an airline and fly somewhere else).

Hannah Francis of The Age tells us the treatments seem “counterintuitive”. Not half. You can listen to other naive victims and touch a 3D printed log:

Participants in the bureau’s “wellness trial” start by filling out a questionnaire to assess their level of “meteoranxiety”.

They then watch a video from Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht, who coined the term meteoranxiety as “the specific anxiety that people feel when their climate and the weather … becomes so abnormal as to give them a sense of foreboding that the future is going to be more difficult than the present; that the next storm is going to wipe them out”.

But the bureau’s proposed treatments may seem a little counterintuitive. There’s a guided meditation that starts off soothingly and escalates into an unusual weather event; an AI chatbot called Gail, who delivers online counselling; a shared online journal to help patients feel less alone with their meteoranxiety; and a three-minute virtual reality simulation of a rainforest which eventually leads the patient to touch a 3D-printed log, giving them a therapeutic dose of “nature”.

“There is a satirical element to the work,” says Tartaglia. It’s good to know there is one. If anyone spots that lone satirical element, let us know.

Art as good as this couldn’t survive without forced payments coerced from taxpayers:

Amount unknown… (can anyone find that grant?)

Olivia Tartaglia recieved $14,953 from the WA Dept of Culture and the Arts.

To support the presentation of “Bureau of Meteoranxiety”, a multi-room pseudo-agency dealing with the pre-traumatic effects of climate change. The presentation will combine sculpture, performance, and digital and virtual reality technology. The presentation will be part of Melbourne’s Next Wave Festival.

Grouped snowflakes break into a wail,

As they feared being caught in a gale,

When a soft gentle breeze,

Caressed their bare knees,

Reaching 3 on the Beaufort scale.

–Ruairi

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