OuCLiPois a research and creation project that presents the controversy surrounding climate manipulation and solar geoengineering. The Ouvroir de Climat Potentiel (OuCliPo) references literature, surrealist movements and the College of Pataphysics, introducing wordplay and subcultural elements that hijack scientific and academic codes. These speculative climate fictions engage our beliefs and our desire to find solutions to climate challenges by proposing a narrative based on an existing technology currently being developed across the Atlantic : solar geoengineering
Various productions are connected to this project :
– Start-up Nubus
– Artivist collective FakeCloud
They represent two fictitious entities clashing in a war around clouds.
« Nubus is the first French solar geoengineering startup, led by Dr. Jules-Remi Bois-Rouge, a specialist in the pataphysics of fluids. It offers a low-cost, easy-to-deploy solution to cool the sky. » This fake startup, created in 2021, sells fake blue clouds to cool down the planet. By speculating on the industrialization of the sky through solar geoengineering, Mariejulie Bourgeois subverts this « repair science » currently developing rapidly in California. Nubus takes the form of a website, a commercial video, promotional merchandise, and performed lectures. Riding the wave of geoengineers' solutionist jargon, the arguments presented become increasingly unsettling and absurd. By confirming the mercantile interests of these engineers, she sounds the alarm on the true nature of this techno-fix.
The controversy also stages a counterattack by the artivist collective FakeCloud, which denounces climate manipulation through an uninhibited awareness campaign that staves off eco-anxiety by using visuals inspired by popular culture. FakeCloud is a collective of artivists committed to fighting against climate manipulation and the production of artificial clouds, accusing Nubus of excessive clouding.
Mariejulie Bourgeois's solar and climate fictions bring together a body of research and creative work resulting in art-science objects, lectures, performances, and publications, as well as meetings with the public and scientific experts on climate issues. If the atmosphere becomes opaque, how can we project ourselves toward new horizons? Opacity here has a dual meaning: the optical transparency of the atmosphere that allows us to see far ahead and thus see the future, but also the clarity of thought drowned in the mass of information overwhelming us.
Digital artist, designer, doctor in Aesthetics, Science and Technology of the Arts, and educator. Born in Paris in 1981, she lives in Cachan and works in Saclay. In 2008, she completed the New Media Master's degree at ENSCI, where she initiated research utilizing digital technologies. She then joined the EnsadLab research cycle on Relational Devices and Interactive Installations in 2009. In 2018, she defended a PhD in Aesthetics, sciences and technologies of the arts on « Solar Fictions : devices that simulate the behaviors of sunlight » at Université Paris 8. She has been teaching at Université Paris-Saclay since 2013 and at the ENS since 2022.
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