Rachel Deiterding

Together We Average as Zero responds to a visit that futurist, architect, and systems theorist Buckminster Fuller made to London, Ontario in 1968. Fuller was known for his techno-utopianism, including a vision for humanity that included controlling and systematizing the use of resources to avoid their depletion. Otherwise, he felt the choice was stark: utopia of oblivion. 

Taking Fuller as a starting point to interrogate the climate crisis, the exhibition asks: What futures are we planning for today? A network of possible futures form the basis of the exhibition, asking questions such as: How can we live within the earth’s means? Are we capable of undoing the damage that has been done? Can we work collaboratively ensure better futures for all? 

The exhibition was curated collaboratively in a team of nine at Western University, running from February 27 to March 12, 2020. My individual contributions explored alternative timescales and forms of communication, encouraging visitors to reconsider how we understand the world and our position within it. Decentering Time contrasts the lifespan of stone with fleeting human lives to question how we think about time and impact. The Language of Trees presents the reciprocal communication networks of trees to ask what we might learn from systems of non-human communication.