Woven Chronicle
2022
circuit boards, speakers, electric wires and fittings
single channel audio (10 min.)
132 x 329 x 12 in. I 335 x 836 x 30 cm.
Woven Chronicle is a group of works that Kallat has been realising since 2011 with diverse content. The wall installation that she conceived expressly for the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Thun illustrates the impact of humans on the environment using a colour code showing the carbon footprint of each country. The ecological footprint is determined here by how much land and water area a population requires to produce the resources it consumes, and by how quickly the waste generated in the process can be broken down to produce new resources. When a population’s ecological footprint exceeds its biocapacity, there is a biocapacity deficit in that region. The region has an “ecological deficit” when the demand for the goods and services that the land and seas can produce is greater than what the region’s ecosystems can regenerate. If, however, the carbon footprint of a region is smaller than its biocapacity, that means that the people there consume less than their biosphere regenerates and absorbs. Then we speak of an “ecological credit”. With this way of visualising ecological debtors and creditors, the Global Footprint Network intends to initiate a dialogue on the increasing importance of biocapacity. In the installation, the map distinguishes between the high standard of living in the Global North and the lower standard in the South, but this particular scale reverses the usual roles: The South does relatively well here, while the footprint of the Global North is significantly larger than its biocapacity.
