Fabula - Micro Stories From Tomorrow's World
a series of 6 moving images
one channel color video, no sound
1080x1080, 1-minute length, MOV
2022-2023
Fabula tells of possible futures and landscapes, asking questions that open up new ways of seeing our natural environment.

As the delicate tempo and patterns of the ocean, clouds, rivers, or sand dunes create a healing and soothing impression, a mesmerizing vision of the natural world unfolds before the viewer's eyes. In this series of 1-minute videos, the impact of climate change is depicted through the emergence of new and unexpected colors in the landscape. Each scene starts with a prompt and unveils a micro-story of a possible future, woven together with inspiration drawn from true scientific facts and scenarios.

As time is passing peacefully and surely, the water's surface glimmers with a surreal green or red. While clouds drift lazily across the sky, their edges tinged with shades of red, purple, or pink depending on the nature of the damage. The gentle ebb and flow of the lake are turning from bleu into a vibrant red. The warm sand dunes are wrapped in an immaculate coat of snow.

As each new vista unfolds, the viewer is drawn into a realm where the boundaries between reality and imagination blur. Yet for all their strangeness, these images are grounded in a deeply felt sense of anticipatory science fiction. They offer a vision of the future that is both calm and unsettling, inviting us to contemplate the potential consequences of our actions on the natural world. Through the lens of these breathtaking visions, we are reminded of the fragile beauty of our planet and the urgent need to protect it.

Fabula 1 - Micro Stories From Tomorrow's World

The warming of Earth's oceans due to climate change is causing changes in the growth and interaction of different species of phytoplankton, which will ultimately alter the colors of Earth's oceans in different regions of the world.


2022

one channel full HD color video

MOV 1080x1080

ed. 70

Fabula 1, 2022

Fabula 2 - Micro Stories From Tomorrow's World

Climate change activist Tim Flannery suggests pumping sulphur into the atmosphere as a novel solution to climate change that could change the color of the sky and repel the sun's rays as a last resort, due to the high speed with which climate change is happening, and everything going in the wrong direction at the moment.

2023

one channel full HD color video

MOV 1080x1080

ed. 10

Fabula 2, 2023

Fabula 3 - Micro Stories From Tomorrow's World

Snowfall in the Sahara Desert is not unprecedented and occurs due to a combination of cold temperatures and moist air brought by winter air circulation patterns from the Atlantic and Mediterranean, particularly over the Atlas Mountains, with snow events likely to continue but become more variable in timing and quantity, although climate change poses greater challenges to the region's water resources and growing cities.

2023

one channel full HD color video

MOV 1080x1080

ed. 10

Fabula 3, 2023

Fabula 4 - Micro Stories From Tomorrow's World

Wildfires have been more frequent and violent in 2022, devastating Turkey, Chile, Canada, Australia, France and many more countries.


2023

one channel full HD color video

MOV 1080x1080

ed. 10

Fabula 4, 2023

Fabula 5 - Micro Stories From Tomorrow's World

The Calbuco volcano eruption in 2015 created a sulfur dioxide plume that had a dramatic effect on sunsets up to Brazil, resulting in spectacular displays of bright unusual red-purple-magenta glow that included a very bright yellow twilight arch, fine cloud structure in the arch seen through binoculars, and long diffuse rays and shadows.

2023

one channel full HD color video

MOV 1080x1080

ed. 10

Fabula 5, 2023

Fabula 6 - Micro Stories From Tomorrow's World

The Salar de Atacama salt flats in Chile, one of the driest places on the planet, are home to bacteria surviving in highly toxic lakes full of salt, lithium, and arsenic that may help us fight plastic pollution, but the mining of lithium is causing the disappearance of the unique ecosystems that contain them, and the scant vegetation that surrounds the salt pan only appears red around springs at the northern edge of the salt flat, with the whole salt flat covering about 3,000 square kilometers.

2023

one channel full HD color video

MOV 1080x1080

ed. 20

Fabula 6, 2023

Explanations of the consequences of climate change often have the elements of a fable: they involve animals and the natural world, they have a moral, and they are seen by some as a totally made-up narrative. And yet fables usually tell uncomfortable truths. Truths that would not be understood if they were not told as a story. In her recent NFT series Fabula, Diane Drubay addresses climate change through a series of micro-stories that depict possible futures in which our planet is transformed into a strange environment, as if taken from a dystopian fantasy.

Pau Waelder, Senior Curator of of Niio