In June 1991, Mount Pinatubo ejected an ash cloud that rose twenty-two miles into the air, reducing expected rising temperatures for two years. Geoengineers are now studying means of creating a similar barrier from sunlight to generate an artificial ‘volcanic winter’. too cool to burn is a long-term research project that reimagines ‘climate sensitivity’, a climate science equation that measures how much the earth will warm based on increasing greenhouse gas emissions; poetically (and paradoxically), climate sensitivity measures uncertainty. A diasporic return to (memories of) the 1991 Mount Pinatubo and 1815 Mount Tambora volcanic eruptions in the Philippines and Indonesia is combined with an analysis of more-than-human matter and an inquiry into futurist techno-ecological conditions, entangled with volcanic myths and rituals across Southeast Asia.
Dennis Dizon (b. Manila, Philippines) is a research-based artist and writer currently living in Barcelona.
