Sunburn
SUNBURN explores clouds, colourful flows, and algal bursts, investigating the many ways that technologies, plants, cells, and colours have evolved methods to screen the sun. The film examines slow and direct forms of sunscreening created on a cellular level through the pink hues of Haematococcus pluvialis algae, while also exploring the burgeoning research into solar geoengineering on a planetary scale, and the cascasding feedback loops it is expected to influence.
Across scales, sunscreens are tools of adaptation. SUNBURN explores how creatures, plants, cells, bodies, laboratories, and entire ecosystems have developed colour-shifting sunscreen adaptations. Rather than being organized by biological taxonomy, this catalogue explores four distinct acts of sunscreening: Spraying, Secreting, Smearing, and Costuming. Through these accounts, SUNBURN presents a dialogue between organic adaptation of sunscreening and engineered intervention, revealing that human attempts to screen from the sun are no longer confined to ointments and shade structures, but is now applied to mountains, clouds, and trees. SUNBURN challenges our perceptions of environmental control and adaptation, inviting us to reconsider how we might shield our bodies and associated environments from the relentless energy of the sun.
__
Sunburn was developed in collaboration with Sina Hensel, within the framework of Junctions21, Pact Zollverein, Essen, 2021.