The Bridgewater Jerry is an intermittently forming, floating, dissipating, and reforming body of water; a fog shaped by meteorological and geological forces, that embodies an archive of knowledge. Water remembers. It holds the past and present together, in the particles it carries between places and bodies, and in its impressions within the topographical and biological realms of our planet. Like the Jerry, we too, are watery. Situated in place and time, but never entirely discrete, we are porous and leaky and spill across and into each other. Eddies in aqueous entanglement with all other bodies (human and more-than-human) in a continuous hydrological cycle.
Our fog requires cold, wet weather, and the first winter of this archive has been unusually dry. We weather this together, with the knowledge that the Jerry’s visits are increasingly uncertain.
The Jerry is a convergence (moisture meeting over middle water), and a veil (visually separating two sides of a river, splitting a city in half). When our optical senses are obscured, we are invited to more attentively listen and feel. To see in a new way. Defamiliarising place, so that we might know it more intimately. Through sound, touch, the waters in your gut, climate, weather, and liquid lungful of molecular dust.
You are invited into exploratory engagement with the fog. We ask that you document your encounters, and share them to the archive (itself, a body, a collation, a veil). The Jerry remembers us, and the aeriform archive remembers the Jerry.
The Aeriform Archive team works across, and with, Country cared for by the Palawa / Pakana of lutruwita, and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of Country, right across the geography now called 'Australia', and acknowledge their deep connection to the lands, skies and waterways. We pay our respects to all Elders, and express our gratitude for their continued sharing of knowledge and culture.
Collaborators
The Aeriform Archive is an interdisciplinary project by artist Hannah Foley. The project draws on her own research, in debt to the research and writings of posthumanism and new materialist scholars, with Astrida Neimanis’ hydrofeminism at the nucleus. The Bridgewater Jerry forecast model has been created with coding from Hayden Foley, in consultation with Michael Conway (Meteorologist) of the Bureau of Meteorology, Hobart. The Aeriform Archive site has been designed and developed by Neon Jungle. In the offline world, promotional images are by Gabrielle Eve and print design by Jordy Cowen.
Forecast Sources
The Bridgewater Jerry forecast is updated daily in response to forecast and real-time observational data from multiple sources. Forecast weather provided by MyWeather2.com. Historical data provided by open-source API Open-Mateo. BoM data is used for internal cross-referencing and accuracy measurement within the ongoing development and refinement of the forecast model. The forecast model is an evolving script, designed to learn over time through ongoing confirmation of weather events, including through your submissions to the archive (thank you).
This project is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.