Who Cares about Yesterday's Rain? (2025)

Performance Lecture. 

Presented at the "The Weather In-Between: Monsoons, Markets and OtherDerivative Atmospheres" ^(link)
public gathering at Para Site, Hong Kong, September 2025.

‘Empty Set’, a solo exhibition by Pratchaya Phinthong.

Before weather became a planning tool, newspapers reported rain that had already fallen, storms that were already in memory—information that seems utterly useless yet satisfied some deeper need to collectively witness atmospheric events, to transform private weather encounters into shared records.

This performance lecture functions as its own form of past weather reporting, excavating the invisible infrastructures designed not merely to predict weather, but to negotiate our collective relationship with atmospheric uncertainty. From the perpetual inadequacy of warning signal mechanisms—too late, too early, never quite right—to the new weather governance prompted by the evolving climate reality, to Hong Kong’s unprecedented decision to keep stock markets trading through typhoons. Each system attempts to bridge the impossible gap between atmospheric chaos and human planning, yet each reveals our persistent vulnerability to forces that exceed all predictions; a restless negotiation in which no infrastructure can fully mediate the encounter between human systems and atmospheric systems.