Weather Spectres of the Socialist Anthropocene: An Interview with Rita Süveges by Maja and Reuben Fowkes
Rita Süveges is a Hungarian artist whose research-based practice explores the ecological impacts of industrial systems, ranging from monocultural agriculture to fossil fuels and extractivism. Growing up on the Great Hungarian Plain surrounded by vast crop fields, Süveges witnessed the environmental legacy of socialist agricultural policies. Her interdisciplinary approach combines visual art with in-depth research into technoscientific imaginaries, examining how capitalism responds to environmental crisis through increasingly technological solutions. In her latest project, Weather Spectre, she looked at the history and mythology of weather manipulation.
Rita Süveges. Weather Spectre installation at the Hungarian National Gallery, 2024. Photograph by Dávid Biró.
Maja & Reuben Fowkes: Your solo exhibition Weather Spectre at the Hungarian National Gallery in Fall 2024 dealt with the phenomenon of weather manipulation, putting into relation “pre-scientific” attempts to influence or control the weather through spells, bell-ringing and incantations, and the techno-scientific innovations of the Anthropocene. In comparing these two modes of meteorological intervention, is it the similarities or differences that interest you most?
Rita Süveges: Definitely the similarities. My father ran a tree nursery after the dissolution of the agricultural co-operative where he had worked prior to the regime change. My personal fascination with nature and the ecological reality of the climate crisis led me to explore the deeper systems that underlie today’s environmental challenges. Later, I began to feel that everything had already been said about the climate crisis as a present threat—despite the lack of action—so I shifted my focus to possible futures. Ecomodernists envision one such future asserting that human societies will eventually decouple from nature through the acceleration of innovative technologies. These technologies do not exist yet, but their promises serve to justify avoiding any changes that might challenge the prevailing notion of perpetual economic growth.
I wanted to examine these technologies and explore their origins. To do so, I conducted interviews with representatives of geoengineering research projects and studied the anthropological history of weather manipulation. The similarities between pre-scientific interventions and today’s technological promises struck me: the speculative leap required to believe that we can scale up the climate tech reaches magical levels. This led me to a central question: if we readily recognize fighting storms with axe-throwing as magical, why do we present technoscientific utopianism as objective, rational, and therefore both possible and desirable? My answer is a boring one: to further push capitalism. Folkloric magical rituals were illusory tools with which people fictitiously dominated nature, because the belief in dominance empowered them and stimulated their activity. I think this is the modus operandi we see in today’s geoengineering, too.
M&RF: Can you describe the specifics of your Weather Spectre project—the media, mode of display, and working process? How does this installation relate to your broader artistic practice?
RS: Weather Spectre emerged from ongoing research that has come into my focus over the past decade, since I work on environmental topics. My approach has always been interdisciplinary. In the series of paintings “out of control” (2019–21), I did not just look at how fossil fuels are harmful, but wanted to understand and create the imaginary link between the carbon cycle and today’s economic dependencies. I am interested in how life is intertwined within these biochemical processes spanning geological time frames. In another project, Genesis: the Irrigation Can of Petroculture (2021), I demonstrated how monocultural agriculture relies on the fossil fuel economy through motor oil bottle-shaped ceramic cans. The painting series All Mere Weeds, and the excursions I led called Anthropocene Field Trips (2021) explored how unsustainable agricultural practices have changed our landscapes so much that it is hard to call any part of it nature anymore.
For the exhibition Weather Spectre—which was made possible by the TÓTalJOY Prize( The TÓTalJOY Prize is awarded biannually by the Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) in Budapest, founded and supported by visual artist Endre Tót.)—I chose to focus on the imaginative dimension of weather manipulation, constructing an installation with a strong visual presence. I find that research-based art often demands significant effort from viewers—extensive texts, lengthy videos, and hard-to-grasp theoretical frameworks. My approach was to compact the research and theoretical background into the accompanying booklet.(Rita Süveges, Weather Spectre, exhibition booklet, 2024. https://issuu.com/ritasuveges/docs/totaljoy_suveges_online_en) This allowed the exhibition space itself to remain visually driven and metaphorically charged.
The installation, placed in front of a mural, comprised seven semi-transparent painted panels made of different materials that play with transparency and reflection: textile, mirrors, the moiré effect of fiberglass netting, and imagery of polished metals. These surfaces echo the elusive, see-through nature of weather itself—ephemeral, ambient, and sensed rather than seen. But beyond meteorology, I was interested in a broader immaterial vision: the aesthetic and ideological contours of utopian technological solutions with their promises of decoupling, that is, separating economic growth from environmental impact, and endless scalability, meaning the belief in the possibility of expanding technologies that work at smaller scales to a global or cosmic level.
I referred to this as the “silver bullet aesthetic” of the technological fix: a solution to a problem that primarily relies on technological advancements. The term silver bullet originates from folklore, from the legend that only a silver bullet could kill a werewolf—a creature that embodies both danger and transformation. In my metaphor, the werewolf represents both the impending climate catastrophe we have summoned and the risky technofix we now turn to in order to escape it. It’s a paradox: we attempt to pull ourselves out of the crisis by the very means that contributed to it—like trying to lift ourselves by our own hair. My see-through werewolf, the first/last panel of the installation, embodies this duality: it is both the looming disaster and the seductive high-tech solution we adopt, often through denial or magical thinking. In that sense, the technofix becomes both the monster and the weapon—an embodiment of our entangled fear and faith in technology. This metaphor resonates throughout the work—especially in the visual language of artillery, missiles, and atmospheric weaponry that repeatedly surfaced during my research.
Rita Süveges. Weather Spectre installation at the Hungarian National Gallery, 2024. Photograph by Dávid Biró.
M&RF: Is Weather Spectre an “artivist” project? This word appears on one of the mirror pieces in your installation.
RS: Despite all efforts—both in this project and others—I remain skeptical of art’s capacity to enact structural change. Artists hold limited power. I would like to see more politicians and the capitalist class come up with solutions to the climate crisis that are not solely intended to generate more votes or profit, but that could truly transform our ways of living, the way our economies work, and how we relate to nature. Artists can talk about social and structural issues, but what we actually need is to immediately reduce emissions, change land use, stop deforestation, and address ocean acidification, etc.
The exhibition was held in the Hungarian National Gallery, which houses historical and contemporary art by grand masters. For a brief moment, I considered referencing the climate protest actions—like the tomato soup splashes on classical paintings—but ultimately chose not to, because I didn’t want to appropriate the work of environmental activists who take real personal and legal risks and are often criminalized for their actions. “Artivism is activism through arts,” along with “Purpose is the new luxury,” were quotes from the PR of the hipster geoengineering Air Company (recently rebranded to AIRCO), which converts CO2 to produce vodka and synthetic fuels. The artivism slogan was ironically etched onto a mirror shaped like a medieval witches’ concoction—a snake entwined with a rooster. It was my small act of self-reflection and resistance against artwashing and the performative climate discourse of corporate PR strategists.
For me, art-making has become a compelling way to investigate and learn. It allows me to engage with the technoscientific imaginary, and interdisciplinary questions such as the deep time of the Earth’s carbon cycles, the chemical foundations of industrial agriculture, and how capitalism often responds to crises by offering increasingly technological—and profit-driven—solutions.
And yet, I became an artist for a much simpler reason: the only thing I really liked was to draw, and I was good at it. Without it, I wouldn’t have had the symbolic or cultural capital to enter the art world in the first place. Over time, I’ve come to understand that I don’t need to choose between theory and visual practice—my works take shape by embracing both.
Rita Süveges. Weather Spectre installation at the Hungarian National Gallery, 2024. Photograph by Dávid Biró.
M&RF: In the glossary of weather manipulation in the Weather Spectre publication, you note that the Soviet Union established the first major rainmaking research facility in 1933. Do you think this is indicative of the appeal of the anthropocentric ideology of nature domination in the era of the first five-year plans, or of an openness to experimental and holistic thinking in socialist science?
RS: The early 1930s in the USSR were marked by the aggressive implementation of Stalin’s first five-year plan, which aimed to rapidly transform the Soviet Union into a modern industrial power. Within this context, weather modification research in the Agrophysical Institution emerged not only as a symbolic expression of human dominion over nature but also as a potential tool to serve state-directed economic planning. It embodied the belief that nature was not an immutable force but something to be mastered and repurposed for the betterment of society.
However, many of these technological interventions, including the first weather modification efforts, were driven more by ideological ambition than proven scientific foundations. The early rainmakers and hail suppressors did not know about cloud physics, crystallography, and thermodynamics. Nevertheless, they made exaggerated claims to secure support, effectively misleading the authorities. In turn, the authorities placed unrealistic expectations on these experimental interventions, demanding large-scale implementation of techniques that were still scientifically unproven and riddled with uncertainty.
Western societies had different justifications but similar interests in weather modification research and practice throughout the 20th century, as the US, France, and Switzerland also experimented with and funded primarily hail suppression programs. Later, however, when cloud seeding technology was developed as hard science in the Soviet Union, its implementation in the form of anti-hail systems was justified by industrialization in pursuit of socialist class politics.(Cloud seeding is a weather modification technique that introduces particles (often silver iodide) into clouds to promote precipitation formation.) “Regarding human work to transform nature, the decisive difference lies in the conditions of production and society: planned or unplanned. There is also a significant difference in terms of who benefits from this millennia-long struggle against the wild, elemental forces of nature: individuals, narrow groups, or tens and hundreds of millions of workers?” (Imre Karczag, A természet átalakításának kérdései [Questions of the Transformation of Nature], 1950)
Rita Süveges. Weather Spectre installation at the Hungarian National Gallery, 2024. Photograph by Dávid Biró.
M&RF: Another aspect of the history of weather modification that your project brings to the fore is the role of the military in driving the development of weather science, as suggested also in your work through representations of missiles and rockets used against the clouds. How did rain-making become an instrument of war?
RS: This was one of the aspects that interested me the most. A common observation throughout history was that rain often followed battles. This coincidence led to a fertile misunderstanding: the sounds of battle—thunderous cannon fire, explosions—were thought to cause rain. Folk traditions reflect this confusion, portraying scenes of battle with the weather: people threw metal objects at unwanted thunderstorms or even bared their backsides to the sky in an attempt to dispel them.
In the 16th century documents on witch trials, a geopolitical layer emerged in weather warfare when it was claimed that witches “sold rain” to the Ottoman Empire, which then dominated Hungary. At the same time, as historian Éva Pócs has shown, these accusations were also direct attacks on women: late medieval witch trial indictments often cited weather magic as a crime, using it to justify witch hunts.
Later, entrepreneurial pursuits followed, such as firing smoke rings from storm cannons charged with gunpowder, and eventually the Oblako missiles—cloud-seeding tools used in socialist-era hail suppression programs. What began as a struggle against the destructive effects of weather eventually turned into weaponization. The military has always played a key role in the development of weather science: it provided logistical support, led scientific expeditions, and even ran national meteorological services. This might explain why today, the geoengineering company mentioned above is developing aviation fuel in collaboration with the U.S. Air Force in the name of green transition.
In 1947, cloud seeding—an effort to induce rain—was developed through joint research by the U.S. military and General Electric. This sparked a wave of utopian fantasies among Cold Warriors and genuine fears during actual conflicts. Weather modification as a covert weapon had obvious appeal: its effects were hard to trace, and damage could be conveniently attributed to natural forces. Some also pondered taming the lion: although the timescales differ radically, the total energy released by a single thunderstorm equals that of a 20-kiloton atomic bomb. Edward Teller, the “father of the hydrogen bomb,” even warned that “conflict over weather control is likely cause of the ‘last war on Earth.’”
Cloud seeding was historically tested in international conflicts, for instance, during the Vietnam War. After these secret activities aired, the UN established the ENMOD (Environmental Modification) Convention in 1977. It forbids the use of any scientific or technological means—meteorological, geophysical, or otherwise—to manipulate the environment, including the weather and climate, for military or other hostile purposes. Nevertheless, the Convention’s provisions were put to the test in 1986, following the catastrophic explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In a covert attempt to prevent radioactive clouds from reaching Russian territory, Soviet authorities allegedly used cloud-seeding techniques to force rainfall over Belarus, absorbing some of the fallout before it could spread further.
Rita Süveges. Weather Spectre installation at the Hungarian National Gallery, 2024. Photograph by Dávid Biró.
M&RF: What do you find most enlightening about the history of anti-hail technology in socialist Hungary—its origins, its ambitions, its successes, its failures? For us, it seems quite emblematic of attitudes and practices towards the natural world in the Socialist Anthropocene.
RS: Since 2018, the Agriculture Chamber of Hungary has operated a nationwide anti-hail system. Using ground-based devices, they release silver iodide into storm clouds to prevent hail formation. However, the origins of this practice trace back to a socialist-era experimental program that began after long preparations in 1976.
The ambition here was to implement a Soviet-style missile-based hail suppression system, which required new meteorological and artillery infrastructure, which was financed by the State Insurance Company. “The active experiment in weather modification is an effective instrument in the struggle for the development of a modern Marxist scientific approach to nature,” was stated at the meeting of the National Meteorological Service in 1974. Hail suppression was just one element in the broader project to industrialize and collectivize agriculture, alongside the introduction of new crops, heavy irrigation systems, and agrochemical use.
Yet one central question remains largely unanswered: Did the technology actually work? Was it effective? How can we determine whether the intervention had an impact—and what might have happened if no intervention had taken place? When the State Insurance Company was privatized in 1989, it lost interest in funding a technology whose benefits it could no longer internalize.
Today’s anti-hail system remains just as mysterious to the public and to farmers as its predecessors. Socialist Hungary’s legacy of industrialized agriculture has taken on increasingly extreme forms: vast monocultures still dominate Hungary’s landscape. In 2022, an unprecedented drought struck the central region of the country, with no precipitation reaching the ground from passing clouds for months during the summer heat. Frustrated and desperate, some farmers sent death threats to the civil operators of the anti-hail system, blaming the technology for the lack of rain.
However, ecologists pointed out that the land’s extreme desiccation was, in fact, caused by the industrial, monoculture-based, irrigation-dependent farming model combined with the climate crisis—creating conditions where clouds passed without releasing rain. Surprisingly, Endre Wirth—the meteorologist who led the introduction of the anti-hail system in the 1970s—was an early public voice on climate change after the regime change.
Rita Süveges. Weather Spectre installation at the Hungarian National Gallery, 2024. Photograph by Dávid Biró.
M&RF: What can we learn from socialist era attempts to manipulate the weather and the wider project of planetary geoengineering, which could be seen as a scaled-up version of the same techno-optimist ethos of nature control? At the same time, trying to stop hail damage by firing rockets at clouds seems, in some ways, closer to the medieval practice of shaking axes at the sky to call for rain than the vast interventions in natural processes imagined by today’s climate engineers.
RS: Hungary’s current large-scale anti-hail operation could only have been introduced thanks to its state-planned socialist past. In most other countries where anti-hail systems exist, they are run by private companies and on a much smaller scale.
Weather modification remains a localized practice with a limited direct impact on planetary processes. However, historical evidence demonstrates that such interventions can disrupt not only environmental systems but also geopolitical relations. Weather modification is comparable to geoengineering in several respects: it serves as a case study for the potential successes—and failures—of large-scale environmental manipulation, as well as the complex international cooperation such efforts would necessitate. Moreover, given the potential scaling effects of geoengineering, it is important to acknowledge the close historical ties between weather warfare and military objectives.
All climate-engineering technologies—such as carbon capture and storage, ocean fertilization, or solar radiation management—are primarily aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change, rather than addressing or halting its anthropogenic causes. Realizing that mitigation and adaptation alone will not prevent climate catastrophe, climate engineers now seek the authority and resources to move beyond their computer models toward real-world testing and large-scale deployment of a technological fix for global warming.
Geoengineering raises questions of climate justice, as wealthier nations could potentially implement such schemes at the expense of further disadvantaging peripheral regions. The historical record of weather modification also indicates that while human attempts to control environmental processes may yield temporary localized successes, they ultimately fail to encompass the full complexity and interconnectedness of natural systems.
This article is part of the Special Issue on the Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts. Articles published as part of the Special Issue:
Rita Süveges
Rita Süveges is a visual artist based in Budapest. Her interdisciplinary, research-based practice is twofold: she outlines a feminist critique of technoscientific imagination through both community-based knowledge-sharing projects and painting installations exhibited in more traditional art spaces. She was awarded the TÓTalJOY Prize in 2023, the Smohay Prize in 2020, and the Audience Prize of the Esterházy Art Award in 2024. Previously, she was a Derkovits Scholarship recipient and was nominated for both the Strabag and Esterházy Art Awards. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and participated in numerous international residency programs, such as the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, ISCP in New York, MeetFactory in Prague, and MQ AIR in Vienna. Her latest solo exhibition, entitled Weather Spectre: From Magic to Geoengineering, was held at the Hungarian National Gallery in 2024. She is a co-founder of the xtro realm artist group and editor and contributor to extrodæsia and the Climate Imaginary Reader.
