While most conversations about climate change rely solely upon the expertise of scientists, the concerns of industries, and the theories of economists, we reach out to designers, musicians, poets, and other members of the creative community. We bring the full force of their imagination and visionary perspectives to the most pressing questions of all.
The Comporta Weather Station works with poets, musicians, sound designers and artists. They are invited for artistic residencies in the village of Carvalhal, to understand the ecosystem and to create and produce their reports on the impact of climate change in the form of sound, words, art installations and music.
The Comporta Weather Station Pavilion will be located in the village of Carvalhal, in accordance with a protocol approved unanimously at Grândola City Hall. Just at the edge of urban development, shouldering up against the open expanse of centuries-old rice fields and only a few meters from the dunes and the Atlantic. Our pavilion stands within an irregularly-shaped dune held in reserve for the whole human community’s intentional engagement with the rest of our ecosystem.
Terra carves out this neutral, liminal space from the line of brick walls that separate city from nature. This place holds space for exploration of a series of questions about connections between non-human nature and everyday human life in the area. How does the human population see, hear, smell and feel non-human nature and the landscape, as urban life gradually takes over the natural environment, and encroaches upon the agrarian one? What is the sense-experience of a human in this place, and how might it be captured and expressed to communicate to those elsewhere? How do the animals and plants - both wild and domesticated - behave around us and our various installations on the land? What’s the weather like, right here, right now - and can we witness how it is changing, with time?
The pavilion will be a new space for cultural production and enjoyment, engaging both the creative community and the local inhabitants and visitors. One part of the pavilion holds space for the resident artists’ creative processes, while the second part hosts members of the public who wish to pause, spend time, and absorb the fruits of those artistic labours.
The Comporta Weather Station reports are based on a series of artistic residencies in the Comporta area.
CWS Residency #1 Carvalhal I March 2023 CWS Residency #2 CWS Residency #3
_CWS Residency #4
The weather reports produced after the residencies are available online, at the World Weather Network website , as well as on Spotify and other popular sound-streaming platforms.
21 June 2023, the summer solstice, marked the beginning of our publication of the weather reports, with Terra:Aura.
The location of the Comporta Weather Station Pavilion was inaugurated on 12 August 2023 during Terrafoundation Warm Up with two concerts.
The Pavilion will inaugurate during the second semester of 2025.
Cover of the first Comporta Weather Station concert programme, 12 August 2023, Carvalhal
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The World Weather Network was a project of research, creation and investigation in the field of climate change that brought s together various cultural protagonists from around the world. ArtAngel, a cultural association based in London, invited 29 institutions from 29 different countries to participate in this network. In their turn, these institutions created a series of Weather Stations that began operating on June 21, 2022. Instead of having scientists and engineers issuing weather reports on climate and weather, these Weather Stations work with artists, curators, designers and the wider creative community. ArtAngel invited Terrafoundation to develop Portugal's Weather Station back in 2021. The network stoped the programme in 2024. Some of the projects, like the one in Comporta, continued.
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