Sound installation, 4x felted rugs
Voice by Raluca Croitoru, Pilar Mata Dupont, Tracy Hanna
Composer Janne Kosmos

A Year Without A Summer is a project that explores waiting in relation to others, learned perception, and the future. The project was inspired by the year 1816, also known as ‘The Year Without a Summer,' when the effects of the eruption of Mount Tambora were felt around the world. That year, unusually cold, stormy and dark conditions swept across Europe and North America, resulting in the coldest year in two and a half centuries. The consequences of the lack of summer were devastating, leading to crop failures, livestock deaths and famine.

A Year Without A Summer takes the form of four confession by different characters caught in states of waiting, having to deal with hope, powerlessness, loss, and uncertainty. Each confession includes a variety of sources, combining fiction, nonfiction, and diary-like elements to reflect on waiting, its dynamics, and the ways it shapes lived experience.

The project has collected a series of conversations with ten people from my circle of friends and acquaintances - Alina Lupu, Florian Cramer, Rana and Sara Hamadeh, Lili Huston-Herterich, Cannach MacBride, Yael Davids, Constanza Gajardo, Irina Gheorghe and Clementine Edwards. They were invited to talk with me for an hour about waiting. The conversations, audio recorded, are exploring how others experience and deal with their day-to-day lives when the future is put on hold.

A Year Without A Summer is the second episode of the project What Happens If We Wait Together? (2020-2023)
Made possible by a financial contribution from CBK Rotterdam and Droom en Daad

Photos by Marta Hryniuk and Sophie Bates

A YEAR WITHOUT SUMMER/2021