‘Mobile Utopia Conference: pasts, presents, futures’ + tethered flight
Location: [Grass Next To Lancaster House Hotel] 54°00’21.0″N 2°47’15.0″W
In collaboration with Sasha Engelmann and Bronislaw Szerszynski
In the context of the continuing expansion of fuel-intensive air travel and the militarisation, securitisation and commercialisation of atmospheric space, the experimental session was devoted to exploring how we might develop an ethical and sustainable relationship with the atmosphere through vernacular ways of sensing, understanding and collaborating with the macro- and micro-dimensions of air.
The approach to critical atmospheric utopias is inspired by Aerocene, inviting a tactile, unmediated skilling of atmospheric awareness. In its name, Aerocene also deliberately evokes the possibility of an epochal shift in humanity’s relation with its home planet, and indeed in the very way that the Earth populates its atmosphere with moving things.
The panel was guided by the following questions
– How can we invent and employ accessible, modest aerial experiments to arrive at an ethical engagement with the atmosphere?
– What tools, skills, imaginaries and alliances do we need to develop to become more sensitive to the objects and vibrations passing through the atmosphere around us?
– How can we populate the air in ways that enhance rather than diminish atmospheric affordances for different forms of life?
More info here
