Cine Stăpânește Vremea ? (Who owns the weather?)
engraved stones, submerged in Timiș river, 2023
120 x 140 x 100 cm each
Some time ago, we came across an intriguing title: Owning the Weather in 2025. In this paper, the U.S. Air Force outlined the potential for using advanced technologies to modify weather conditions and reshape the skies in ways that could support military objectives. This plan imagined a future where weather, harnessed and controlled, became a tactical asset—a force multiplier in military operations: creating fog to shield movements, clearing clouds for surveillance, or amplifying storms over adversaries. At first, it felt like a scenario of a science fiction movie. Yet the plan of “owning the weather” has lingered, resurfacing each time we hear the weather forecast.
Temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind—the clinical vocabulary of weather reports. Yet the world has moved beyond data. It now faces relentless extremes: catastrophic floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts—erasing plant life and disrupting ecosystems.
Two years ago, Europe endured its worst drought in five centuries. Rivers receded, revealing Hungersteine (famine stones)—ancient low-water markers etched with stark warnings. These stones, submerged in riverbeds, are historic meteorological chronicles, voices of the past that rise only when waters recede—a forewarning chiseled in rock. We are inspired by how a Hungerstein communicates, performing a weather forecast by other means.
In the arid expanse of southern Romania’s Sahara Olteniei we found a vanished river leaving only its stones. We moved two such stones west, embedding them in the Timiș riverbed, where the water’s flow still seemed steady. We engraved Cine Stăpânește Vremea? (Who controls/owns the weather?) on a stone and submerged it in the river—a silent witness to shifting waters, a hidden silent sensor of hydrological shifts, an unseen public monument that anticipates rather than remembers. In Romanian, vreme means both "weather" and "the times," while stăpânește (from a stăpâni) encompasses "to control," "to reign," and "to own." Who, then, controls our times? And who owns the weather?
In October 2024, the diminishing waters brought the stone to the surface almost entirely.
Amid the ever-changing climate, and nestled within the Timiș riverbed, this work becames a sensor of hydrological shifts, while simultaneously serving as an imperceptible public monument, perhaps the most discreet monument in Timișoara.
engraved stones, submerged in Timiș river, 2023
120 x 140 x 100 cm each
Some time ago, we came across an intriguing title: Owning the Weather in 2025. In this paper, the U.S. Air Force outlined the potential for using advanced technologies to modify weather conditions and reshape the skies in ways that could support military objectives. This plan imagined a future where weather, harnessed and controlled, became a tactical asset—a force multiplier in military operations: creating fog to shield movements, clearing clouds for surveillance, or amplifying storms over adversaries. At first, it felt like a scenario of a science fiction movie. Yet the plan of “owning the weather” has lingered, resurfacing each time we hear the weather forecast.
Temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind—the clinical vocabulary of weather reports. Yet the world has moved beyond data. It now faces relentless extremes: catastrophic floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts—erasing plant life and disrupting ecosystems.
Two years ago, Europe endured its worst drought in five centuries. Rivers receded, revealing Hungersteine (famine stones)—ancient low-water markers etched with stark warnings. These stones, submerged in riverbeds, are historic meteorological chronicles, voices of the past that rise only when waters recede—a forewarning chiseled in rock. We are inspired by how a Hungerstein communicates, performing a weather forecast by other means.
In the arid expanse of southern Romania’s Sahara Olteniei we found a vanished river leaving only its stones. We moved two such stones west, embedding them in the Timiș riverbed, where the water’s flow still seemed steady. We engraved Cine Stăpânește Vremea? (Who controls/owns the weather?) on a stone and submerged it in the river—a silent witness to shifting waters, a hidden silent sensor of hydrological shifts, an unseen public monument that anticipates rather than remembers. In Romanian, vreme means both "weather" and "the times," while stăpânește (from a stăpâni) encompasses "to control," "to reign," and "to own." Who, then, controls our times? And who owns the weather?
In October 2024, the diminishing waters brought the stone to the surface almost entirely.
Amid the ever-changing climate, and nestled within the Timiș riverbed, this work becames a sensor of hydrological shifts, while simultaneously serving as an imperceptible public monument, perhaps the most discreet monument in Timișoara.