Topologies of Air, Special Screening, Cinema Multisalo Teatro, Mendrisio, Switzerland

A special screening of Topologies of Air, (2021), three screen video and multi-channel sound installation by Shona Illingworth at the Cinema Multisalo Teatro, Mendrisio, Switzerland on occasion of the AEROPOLITICS conference on Contemporary Forms of Aerial Power.

Topologies of Air examines how the military and corporate colonisation of airspace and outer space intersects with the existential threats of climate change. Filmed in different parts of the world, and including multiple voices from the Airspace Tribunal, an international people’s tribunal established by Illingworth with human rights lawyer Nick Grief in 2018, recorded discussions, and archive film, the project examines the impacts of accelerating military, industrial and corporate exploitation of airspace and outer space, environmental degradation, and the implications for human rights. Investigating how humans have radically transformed the sky from a space of cultural meaning, utopian visions and wonder into a source of increasing existential planetary threat, Topologies of Air maps an ever-more complex, weaponised, and instrumentalised space of surveillance, territorialisation and multi-domain war.

Delving into the spatial revolution ushered in by aviation in the early twentieth century, this conference aims to explore the aesthetic and political implications of aerial vision, and to analyse how various aerial technologies - from airplanes to satellites, from spacecraft to drones and digital mapping systems such as Google Earth and Google Maps - have influenced urban planning, architecture and land management, transforming the way we perceive and understand the underlying world we live in through its images.