AIR MATTERS. Learning from Heathrow (2017-2020).

Archived Feb 27, 2020

The Green Man, Hatton Cross. 2017. Photograph: Nick Ferguson

Politics of Air. 2019. Symposium at Watermans Arts. Left to Right: Georgina Voss, Paul Rekret, Anna Feigenbaum,, Steven Griggs. Photograph: Phil Harris

Sasha Engelmann and Sophie Dyer. 2019.  Satellite Séance. Performance at the symposium Politics of Air.  Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Learning from Heathrow is an art project that seeks to intervene in debates around airport expansion at London Heathrow. At the same time, it explores the capacity of a context-responsive, research-driven art practice as an agent of social change.

Initiated in September 2017, it has brought together academics, activists, artists, and neighbourhood residents in the context of a profoundly uneven political struggle. These contributions straddle multiple worlds – art, acoustic science, geography, ecology, economics, law, media, neighbourhood activism and politics. It asks: What are the potential and limitations of curatorial practice as a zone in which such worlds can meet? What might the project contribute to the field of art and mobilities research?

To date, outputs have taken the form of workshops, walking tours, a symposium and a group exhibition hosted by Watermans Arts. It will be of interest to those who have a stake in the neighbourhood’s environment,  to those for whom the politics of air at Heathrow is indivisible from wider debates around climate change, and to those want to know more about interdisciplinary, socially engaged art practice.

Download exhibition press release

Download curatorial statement

Download supporting text. Airport/Neighbourhood

View images from the exhibition

Read Exhibition Review: Patrick Joseph. 2019. Air Matters: The inescapable fight for flight. Furtherfield. Available at: https://www.furtherfield.org/air-matters-the-inescapable-fight-for-flight/

#airmatters #watermansartscentre

Supported by:

Research Context

I. Theoretical Frameworks

• The mobilities paradigm

In times of rapid geopolitical, technological and environmental change, there is need for epistemologies able to capture movement. These will need to comprehend mobile objects of study –  people, goods, resources, particles, viruses, ideas, information – but also shifting relations between these entities. For this reason, mobilities transcend geographies as well as dichotomies between disciplines, and they elude visualization methodologies developed in the context of the sedentary. In their place are needed ways of thinking and representing transaction, interconnectivity, interdependence, fluidity, networks, displacement and sociality (Sheller and Urry, 2006). Art research has initiated a response to these conditions: Operating from within the Centre for Mobilites Research (CEMORE), Lancaster University, the first Art and Mobilities Symposium was held at the Peter Scott Gallery in 2018 and a network established by artist Jen Southern in 2020.

• The curatorial

Since the 1990s, curating practices have been exploring modes of operation suited to the task of responding to social political realities in ways that the exhibition of artifacts alone cannot do. Characterised by embedded pedagogy, collaboration, interdiscipinarity, and discursive practices (Lind 2012), the curatorial is one such mode. These modes speak to political struggle at Heathrow, marked as it is by longevity (at least 20 years) and the involvement of actors from all walks of life. Effective cultural engagement in the Heathrow context will require a range of platforms that bring together stakeholders.

• The environmental turn within the arts

The environmental turn within the arts includes consideration of the air, air quality, and atmospheres (Demos, 2016). Discourses operate in tandem with others around airport struggle, of which the Heathrow context is exemplary in its longevity and the scale of public attention. Heathrow is Europe’s busiest airport and promises to shape debates and decisions further afield. However, the domains – the curatorial, political ecology and airport struggle – have not been brought together in a publicly facing exhibition context. The Heathrow expansion debate offers a timely opportunity to fill the lacuna.

• The politics of aesthetics

Art theoretical discourses affirm art’s ability to deliver social justice agendas, whether via an aesthetic regime (Ranciere, 2006) or social engagement (Kester, 2008). In my  PhD research I built on these accounts through an exploration of the way that context and mode of circulation conditions art’s social potential. If art has capability in social transformation, then its best chances of realising this lie in an expanded zone of creativity that conjoins ethical life style practice, movement building, and aesthetic production. There will be a need for alliances forged with art institutions decoupled from those (art) markets that produce the very inequalities that the art decries. Community arts centres, conversations with those involved in political struggle, arms-length public funding schemes and publications that speak across different constituencies are likely to play leading roles in successful projects.

• Non-representational methodologies

Convention dictates that sciences, including social sciences, observe in a disembodied way. Pursuit of objectivity – the need to decouple the knower and the known (Daston and Galison, 2007) – excludes the body as an instrument of discovery. But place – space that is lived and experienced – is too layered, fluid and complex to be grasped though these rational frameworks (Smithson, 1967; Thrift, 2007). So, to take an example from the Heathrow context, acoustic science can give us decibel counts for aircraft noise, but it can’t tell us anything about how aircraft noise affects human relations under the flight path. Hence, it is within the situated body, rather than the laboratory or library, that some of the more pertinent research questions are likely to be formed, and it is through embodied practices that the more insightful understandings of place and mobility are likely to be arrived at.

• Productive constraint

The seminal set of essays Learning from Las Vegas by Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, et al (1977) provides the idea of productive constraint – the notion that the ‘non city’ (in this case the airport), designed as it is for specific kinds of use, generates built forms that defy dominant style. The airport and surrounding airspace are replete with such forms, as well as with unusual space-time rhythms, and maverick activities. Collectively, these testify to the existence of unaccounted cultures of air use in the airport neighbourhood. In conjunction with new materialist philosophies, these ideas invite speculation that built forms, in the shape of artworks or otherwise, can have agency in helping make public ‘matters of concern’ (Latour, 2006).

II. Political Backdrop

In July 2015 the Airports Commission published proposals by Heathrow Holdings Limited to increase capacity at Heathrow airport (UK Government, 2015). The proposals, which centre on the construction of an additional terminal and runway, were adopted as policy by Government in 2016. These events brought into relief the extent to which the interests of industry and finance on the one hand, and those of residents on the other, are divided. For the former, the air is a hyper-modern space of networks and travel. For the latter, it is what they must breathe. Such contrasting viewpoints have created a significant societal challenge that has implications for sustainable development, well-being, and human dignity.

In Parliament, in the law courts, and on digital forums, corporate and state justifications for expansion are underwritten by international law and bolstered by the authority of techno-scientific quantitative data. Decibel and Co2 emission counts are pitted against the vagaries of social and environmental justice – happiness, ecological sustainability – that, in the absence of quantification data, are readily excluded from consideration (Dobruskez, F. 2017). There is an urgent need for these systemic illegitimacies to be made public, for critical appraisals of the hegemonic nature of data, and for the adoption of epistemologies grounded in the authority of lived experience.

Teddington Action Group. Publicity graphics. 2019. Photograph: Paul Beer

Clapham Stowaway efit. 2019. Metropolitan Police

Little Harlington Flying Club. Photograph: Nick Ferguson

Heathrow Holdings, the UK Government and the statutory transnational corporations that regulate the air such as the Civil Aviation Authority act in the interests of market forces. What comes to count as an acceptable culture of air use is determined by market logics and its commercial viability is optimized once it is acknowledged as private, homogenous, commodifiable and outside nature. So, while the detrimental effects are shared by all – noise pollution, depletion of air quality – the financial rewards are distributed among the few. Legislation, policing and public relations initiatives are used to naturalise this understanding, and to minimize the influence of actors that disrupt it: birds, drone fliers are two conspicuous examples. These authoritarian practices, at odds with the principles of both social and environmental justice, cannot go unchallenged. There is an urgent need to write alternative histories, ones that enable the air to be reclaimed as a common resource and which site it firmly within a shared ecology and heritage.

The groundswell of engagement with Heathrow expansion debates spans the spheres of government, academia, NGOs, international statutory corporations, activists and community led lobby groups. However, particularly with respect to politics, science and art, these spheres operate in relative isolation. There would seem to be an absence of a shared platform for the production and dissemination of work, an absence that signals, in turn, the need for a space in which to foster knowledge exchange between different approaches the problem.

Methodologies

I. Conversations with stakeholders

Central to the development of the project have been conversations with organisations beyond the academy whose work intersects with the project focus. They include: HACAN, a lobby group that gives a voice to those under the flight path and which has industry and community links; Grow Heathrow, and Pause Heathrow, both activist organisations, and Watermans, an community arts organisation located under the flight path and in receipt of grant funding from Arts Council England. Also important have been networks of relations forged with research centres within the academy: UAL’s Centre for Research into Sound Arts Practice (CRISAP), the Arts and Mobilities Research Centre (Lancaster), the Department of Invasive Species at The Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, Kingston University Earth Sciences.

II. Surveying

For the artwork Capsule, the landing gear compartment of a long haul aircraft was visited, measured up and surveyed forensically. At this stage of the project there were several ideas in play. One was to get a sense of the space in which the Heathrow stowaways hide – its size, shape, and distance from the ground. Another was to set in motion ideas on how to represent the experience of being inside. Another was to find a material witness to the otherwise unseen and unquantified material transported around the world in the compartment. This last idea came to mind only when immersed in the compartment. It was inspired by the discovery of the layers of dust and grease that caked the inside walls. Suggestive of geology, they would have been built up over the course of the aircraft’s history but unlike geological layers, these strata were made from material gathered from around the world. In this respect, it was distinctly anthropogenic. The concept also drew influence from The Ethics of the Dust, essays by the nineteenth century artist and social reformer John Ruskin, and in which he contends that soot and grime on buildings constitutes a time stain that is integral to its proper understanding (1875). Remarkably, Ruskin published these essays only 5 years after Charles Darwin published the Origin of Species.

In collaboration with Dr Andreas Hahn, a colleague in Kingston University’s Department of Earth Sciences, microstratigraphic material that made up the surface layer of the landing gear compartment was collected and surveyed under the microscope. Images were digitally captured and printed for display.

III. Modelling

For the artwork Capsule, the landing gear compartment was modelled digitally and in 3D. The intention was to understand the space in which stowaways hide, invoke it in the context of an exhibition and test its capability as a catalyst for thought. The model would be installed in the gallery in the form of a 0.7 scale model that visitors could enter. The model would double up as an auditorium in which to host debates about the politics of air at Heathrow.

III. Presenting

In 2018, Ferguson presented project ideas in the following context:

Local school: Orleans Park School, VI Form Talk and Workshop. Feb and June, 2018

Lancaster University. Centre for Art and Mobilities Research (CEMORE):  Art and Mobilities Research Inaugural Symposium, Peter Scott Gallery: Pop up journal available here: https://www.academia.edu/37180057/2018_Art_and_Mobilities_Network_Inaugural_Symposium_Instant_Journal_Peter_Scott_Gallery_

Kingston University: Landscape and Evidence Roundtable, convened by Matthew Flintham, Kingston School of Art, July 2019

IV. Commissioning

Over the course of 2017 and 2018 I met with artists whose profiles included research into air and whose practices spanned sound, performance and sculpture. He invited them to propose an artwork which responded to an aspect of the curatorial statement.

The Exhibition

Watermans Arts Centre, 40 High Street, Brentford  TW8 0DS

October 3, 2019 – January 5, 2020

Air Matters. 2019. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Air Matters. 2019. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Louise K Wilson. Frequency. 2019. Installation view. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Nick Ferguson

Kate Carr. Ascending Composition 1 (For planes). Mixed media, 2019. Installation view. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Suzi Corker

Kate Carr. Ascending Composition 1 (For planes). Mixed media, 2019. Installation view. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Nick Ferguson

Kate Carr. Ascending Composition 1 (For planes). Mixed media, 2019. Photograph: Suzi Corker

Kate Carr. Ascending Composition 1 (For planes). Mixed media, 2019. Installation view. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Kate Carr. Ascending Composition 1 (For planes). Mixed media, 2019. Installation view. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Kate Carr. Ascending Composition 1 (For planes). Mixed media, 2019. Photograph: Nick Ferguson

Air Matters. 2019. Watermans Arts. Gallery View. Photograph: Phil Harris

Matthew Flintham. 2019.  Heathrow (Volumetric Airspace Structures). Mixed media. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Matthew Flintham. 2019.  Heathrow (Volumetric Airspace Structures). Mixed media. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Magz Hall. Magz Hall. Skyport. Mixed media, 2019. Photograph: Phil Harris

Magz Hall. Magz Hall. Skyport. Mixed media, 2019. Photograph: Phil Harris

Magz Hall. Magz Hall. Skyport. Mixed media, 2019. Photograph: Phil Harris

Hermione Spriggs & Laura Cooper.2019. The Substitute. Installation view. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Hermione Spriggs & Laura Cooper.2019. The Substitute. Installation view. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Nick Ferguson

Hermione Spriggs & Laura Cooper.2019. The Substitute. Installation view. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Nick Ferguson

Louise K Wilson. Frequency. 2019. Installation view. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Nick Ferguson

Louise K Wilson. Frequency. 2019. Installation view. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Matthew Flintham. 2019.  Heathrow (Volumetric Airspace Structures). Mixed media. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Nick Ferguson. 2019. Capsule. Installation view of digital captures of forensic sample from Ethiad Airways Boeing 777-200LR A6-LRC. Photograph: Phil Harris

Nick Ferguson. 2019. Capsule. Microscopic glass bead used as the reflective agent in runway paint. Digital capture of forensic sample from Ethiad Airways Boeing 777-200LR A6-LRC: Digital capture. Dr. Andreas Hahn

Nick Ferguson. 2019. Capsule. Installation view. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

The exhibition Air Matters, Learning from Heathrow was hosted by Watermans Arts and curated by Nick Ferguson in collaboration with Klio Krajewska, head of New Media at Watermans. Spread through the gallery, entrance foyer and terrace at Watermans, the exhibition comprised sound and visual arts by Kate Carr, Nick Ferguson, Matthew Flintham, Magz Hall, Hermione Spriggs & Laura Cooper and Louise K Wilson. All works were commissioned for the exhibition.

Works in the Exhibition

Kate Carr. Ascending Composition 1 (For planes). Mixed media, 2019

The airspace surrounding Heathrow is partitioned both vertically and horizontally. Ascending Composition 1 (For planes) seeks to reflect on the governance of this space by using sound to infiltrate its forbidden zones. Working with the conception of the air as a contested space, this artwork inverts the relationship of residents subject to the vagaries of aircraft noise by using helium balloons and kite tail sound systems to take the terrestrial sounds of Heathrow’s neighbourhoods into the sky. The three kite tail sound systems shuffle through recordings taken in residential and natural areas surrounding the airport, creating a shifting soundscape intended for broadcast along the flight path. In a world where both who gets to make noise and enjoy silence is so tied to wealth and corporate influence, this work seeks to carve out a moment where forgotten, over-powered and fragile sounds take flight. The composition is broadcast via the balloon-elevated kite tails in Watermans gallery.

Nick Ferguson. Capsule. Mixed media, 2019

Capsule is a 0.7 scale model of an aircraft landing gear compartment accompanied by a set of photographic prints. Suspended from the ceiling and occupying a central part of the gallery, the model is proposed as an auditorium/immersive space which evokes the original, that of a Boeing 777 aircraft. The prints show samples of material gathered forensically from a wheel bay of Ethiad Airways Boeing 777-200LR A6-LRC upon retirement in March 2019. Captured under an electron microscope, the sample includes sand, spores, seeds, bacteria and fragments of reflective runway paint which have become trapped and transported from one part of the world to another. More information on this work is available here

A paper given on this project at Geographies of Trouble Geographies of Hope, Royal Geographical Society 2019 is available here: http://nickferguson.co.uk/pdfs/RGS%202019.%20Capsule%203.pdf

Magz Hall. Skyport. Mixed media, 2019

Skyport takes its name from the pirate radio station Skyport Radio which broadcast from a garden shed under the Heathrow flightpath between 1971 and 1979. The commission extends the artist’s enquiry into the contested nature of radio frequencies and their governance. In the skies above London private transmissions from air traffic control compete for wavelength with a range of public transmissions, both pirate and licensed, and indeed, the AM spectrum is dominated by the airport’s transmissions. While these transmissions are available for all to hear, in the UK it is both illegal to listen to them and to relay what has been heard to a third party. In defiance of these regulations, aviation enthusiasts eavesdrop on air traffic control and there is a burgeoning market for the scanning technologies that make it possible. On display for Skyport is a set of scanners, items selected from the Skyport Radio archive and a plasma screen showing in wave form current air traffic radio activity. The full Skyport Archive can be found here:

A blog for the project research can be found here.

Matthew Flintham. Heathrow (Volumetric Airspace Structures). Mixed media, 2019

Heathrow (Volumetric Airspace Structures) is a planning table showing a map of the Greater London area and focused on the land surrounding Heathrow. The shape of the table is defined by the limits of the London airspace control zone which consists of two intersecting irregular rectangles combining rounded edges and hard corners. The map shows the major traffic routes across central and west London, as well as the polygonal restricted and controlled airspace zone over Heathrow. The map also extends vertically, projecting the airspace zones into three dimensions, revealing the invisible volumetric structures that define the London skies. In this way the structure becomes an extension of the map following its stylist design and iconography.

Hermione Spriggs and Laura Cooper. The Substitute. Mixed media, 2019

The Substitute is a two part work comprising a sculpture and an audio composition played through Tannoy speakers. The sculpture is sited on the gallery terrace overlooking the River Thames. The speakers are positioned above the gallery entrance on the same terrace. The sculpture is a Flashing Hawkeye decoy, based on the design of a commercially available product of the kind used by airports to ensure a bird-free environment. The scarer consists of a constantly spinning visual deterrent with large multi-angled mirrors. These give a powerful flash of reflected light from the sun or even a full moon, scaring away birds over large distances. The artists have redesigned the graphics of the decoy, so that their own human eyes feature in place of the hawk eyes on the original. The audio piece is composed entirely of found text, gathered from the websites of pest-control companies and online advertising for Heathrow’s duty-free shopping experience. To listen to the audio piece, click on the player below.

Louise K Wilson. Frequency. Mixed media, 2019

Frequency is a multi-channel audio installation accompanied by a set of drawings. Voice and field recordings are combined to explore the affective and ‘felt’ experience of air travel. Verbal accounts from passengers describing emotions (primarily those) experienced just after take off and landing are undercut with a layer of location (field) recordings.  Both have been recorded and rendered into an ASMR (‘autonomous sensory meridian response’) register (ASMR recordings are typically created with the intention of stimulating a tingling and relaxing sensation). Elsewhere, recordings of the sonic fallout collected from the Airport provide a ‘darker’ background for the presence and effect of aviation. The material for the accompanying postcard drawings has been sourced from photographs distributed on social media showing passengers’ window views of clouds. Overall, Frequency points to a set of contradictory positions concerning our desire for air travel. Click on the links below for exerts from the audio tracks.

Workshops

Air Matters. 2019. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Air Matters. 2019. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Air Matters. 2019. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

The exhibition was accompanied by the following workshops:

Listening to Signals in the Air. Saturday October 5. Please join design writer and maker Jane Norris to design and build listening devices. The devices will enhance hearing, help pick up signals and capture everyday airborne sounds that might otherwise pass unnoticed.

Download programme

Heathrow Sound Walks. Saturday October 12 & 26, 2019. Please join artist Kate Carr in search of sound, atmospheres and airborne life in the Heathrow suburbs. You will learn to conduct fieldwork and make audio recordings.

Download programme

Artworks for Birds. Saturday October 19, 2019. Please join artist and anthropologist Hermione Spriggs and artist Laura Cooper to explore bird experiences of the air and exchange ideas on how rethinking animal-human relations can be passed on through art and design education.

Download programme

Symposium

Politics of Air 

Saturday November 9, 2019.  10:00 – 18:00

Salomé Voegelin. 2019. Airplanes Landing. Performance at the symposium Politics of Air. Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Politics of Air. 2019.  Symposium at Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Politics of Air. 2019.  Symposium at Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Politics of Air. 2019.  Symposium at Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Sasha Engelmann and Sophie Dyer. 2019.  Satellite Séance. Performance at the symposium Politics of Air.  Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

Sasha Engelmann and Sophie Dyer. 2019.  Satellite Séance. Performance at the symposium Politics of Air.  Watermans Arts. Photograph: Phil Harris

The symposium comprised a day of presentations, discussions and debates on the politics of air in the Heathrow neighbourhood. It asked: what are the local cultures of air use? How does the air shape our societies, and how democratically is it governed? How is the air fought over and by whom? What ethical questions around air use, noise and air pollution do planners face and how might we equip them to shape its future? It brought together perspectives from the community, industry professionals, activists, artists and academics across the arts, geography, environmental science and politics. The ambition was an event of international significance in which participants defined challenges, generated strategic questions, and instigated new approaches to the struggle over air.

Keynote: Professor Derek McCormack, Professor of Cultural Geography, Oxford University. Author of Atmospheric Things. On The Allure of Elemental Envelopment. Duke University Press, 2018.

Download full programme. [prints to A3 colour, folds to A5]

View photos from the symposium

Listen to the symposium

Teddington Action Group. 2019. Publicity Graphics

Stefan Wermuth. 2013 Reuters. Adobe Huts, Heathrow

Heathrow Runway Proposal. 2016. Nicholas Grimshaw Architects

Summary of the project so far:

Against the backdrop of an explosive public interest issue whose ramifications span public health and environmental justice, and whose impact will register both locally and globally, Air Matters has sought to conjoin expertise from within and beyond the institution through the media of community centred exhibition and public programming. It also embraced multiple modes of production across surveying, presentation, commissioning, pedagogy, knowledge exchange, and exhibiting. This have tested art’s curatorial capacity in the Heathrow context – its ability to bring new knowledge and processes to long-term political struggle at Heathrow –, as well as its potential aeromobilities research.

Artist Biographies

Kate Carr has been investigating the intersections between sound, place, and emotionality both as an artist and a curator since 2010. During this time she has ventured from tiny fishing villages in northern Iceland, explored the flooded banks of the Seine in a nuclear power plant town, recorded wildlife in South Africa, and in the wetlands of southern Mexico. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wire, Pitchfork, Fact Magazine, The Quietus, and The Guardian. It has also been played on the radio on stations ranging from various channels of the BBC, to independent stations in Estonia. Her music can be found on the labels Helen Scarsdale (US), Rivertones (UK), Soft (France) 3Leaves (Hungary) Galaverna (Italy) as well as on her own label Flaming Pines. She is a PhD candidate at London College of Communication. Kate Carr’s website

Nick Ferguson is an artist and academic based in London. His research examines the relationship between art, space and power, with a current focus on London Heathrow, its neighbourhoods and airspace. His work has recently featured at/in the Royal Geographic Society (2019), Places Journal (2019), Tate (2018), and the Journal of Cultural Geography (2017). In 2018 he was awarded an Arts Council Project Grant to curate the exhibition and public programme, Air Matters. Learning from Heathrow. He holds a BA from Oxford University, an MA from the University of the Arts and a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London. He is Associate Dean for Research at Richmond University and Senior Lecturer in Critical and Historical Studies at Kingston School of Art. Nick Ferguson’s website

Matthew Flintham is an artist and writer on representations of landscape and issues of militarisation, security and surveillance. He has a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, an MA in Cultural Studies from the London Consortium, and a PhD from the Royal College of Art. His work intersects academic and arts practices, exploring speculative relationships between film, architecture, power and place, and the possibilities for arts methods to reveal hidden relations in the landscape. Between 2016-19, he was ECR Fellow at Kingston School of Art, and most recently, a Research Associate in the Department of Architecture at Cambridge University. Matthew Flintham’s website

Magz Hall is a sound and radio artist. Her work has been exhibited at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, The British Museum, Tate Britain, The Sainsbury Centre, Whitechapel Gallery, Barbican, the V&A, Jerwood Visual Arts, and widely in Europe and the US. Tree Radio at YSP was a finalist for the British Composer Award in Sonic Art 2016.  She has curated exhibitions, broadcast, and led workshops. She also leads the artists’ group Radio Arts Much of her sound-based work is concerned with speculative futures of FM, inspired by 100 years of international radio art practice. She holds a PhD from the University of the Arts, London and is Senior Lecturer in Radio at the School of Creative Arts and Industries Canterbury Christ Church University.  Magz Hall’s website ; magz@radioarts.org.uk ;  Twitter radio_mind ; www.radioarts.org.uk

Hermione Spriggs and Laura Cooper come together for special projects as the Anthropology of Other Animals. “AoOA” is a multi-species conversation dedicated to discussion and experimentation around our collective status as human animals. “AoOA” is also a sound produced by both humans and animals at moments of capture and release. “AoOA” explores the possibility of making art for humans and other species of animal through the creation of multisensory lures, decoys and traps, and is more broadly engaged in topographic translations between species, perspectives and sites. The Anthropology of Other Animals has developed in alliance with The Political Animal Reading Group (The Showroom, London/ Dublin), Land Art Mongolia (Ulaanbaatar/ Berlin), Titanik Galleria (Turku, Finland), East Side Projects (Birmingham), the Multimedia Anthropology Lab (London), Mildred’s Lane (Pennsylvania) and Emerging Subjects of the New Economy at University College London.

Artist’s website:  https://hermione-spriggs.com

Artist’s website:  http://lauracooper.co.uk

Louise K Wilson is a visual artist who makes installations, live works, sound and video works. She frequently involves the participation of individuals from industry, museums, medicine and the scientific community in the making of work and previous associations have included the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds (audiology collection), Newcastle Internal Airport (air traffic control), Montreal Neurological Institute, the Science Museum, London and the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training facility in Moscow. Recent exhibitions include the Meetings Festival (ET4U, Denmark, 2019); More in Common (A.P.T. Gallery London, 2018); Thackray Uncovered (Thackray Medical Museum, 2017); Submerged: Silent Service (Ohrenoch, Berlin, 2015); and Topophobia (Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London; Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool and Spacex Gallery, Exeter, 2012). Her programme Cold Art – exploring artists’ fascination with Cold War sites – was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2018. She attained her Doctorate from the University of Derby and is a lecturer in Art and Design at the University of Leeds. Louise K Wilson website

Watermans Arts Centre

Watermans is West London’s leading arts centre. It attracts over 250,000 visits a year to its thriving and inclusive programme of independent cinema, theatre, exhibitions and courses.  Watermans runs a year-round programme of cutting-edge digital arts for which it receives National Portfolio Organisation funding from Arts Council England.

Watermans also leads several other major projects outside its venue. These are primarily concerned with broadening access to high quality arts in communities that engage little, if at all, in the arts, to support community cohesion and economic regeneration:

Bell Square, a purpose-built outdoor arts venue in Hounslow Town Centre

Circulate, a London-wide outdoor arts touring network

Creative People & Places Hounslow, Arts Council England’s major investment in increasing arts capacity in underserved areas, working in Feltham, Heston and Cranford, Brentford and central Hounslow https://www.watermans.org.uk/about-us/

Press

Exhibition Review: Patrick Joseph. 2019. Air Matters: The inescapable fight for flight. Furtherfield. Available at: https://www.furtherfield.org/air-matters-the-inescapable-fight-for-flight/

The exhibition receives a generous plug from Verity Sharp’s Late Session on BBC Radio 4 as she talks about the ‘indefatigable Kate Carr here at 20’ 20″ : https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0009lm1

Thank you Late Session!

Works commissioned for the exhibition featured on the Paris based experimental radio platform Pnode as part of the broadcast Antivirus. Klio, 07 04 20, 14.00 https://p-node.org/

Related Projects/Reading/Viewing

Adey, Peter. Air/Atmospheres of the Megacity. Adey, Peter. In: Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 30, No. 7-8, 12.2013, p. 291-308.

Appadurai, A. 1996. ‘The Production of Locality’. In: Modernity at Large; Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation. University of Minnesota Press

Addley, E and McCarthy, R. 2001. The Man Who Fell to Earth. The Guardian [Online]. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/jul/18/immigration.immigrationandpublicservices

Auge, M. 1995. Non Places. An Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Verso

Arbona, J. 2010. Dangers in the Air. Innovative Projects that Conceptualize Air as a Dynamic and even Political Component of Buildings and Landscapes. Places Journal. Available at: https://placesjournal.org/article/dangers-in-the-air-aerosol-architecture-and-invisible-landscapes/

Back, L. Falling from the Sky. Patterns of Prejudice. Vol. 37. No. 3, 2003. Pp 341 – 353.

Balkin, Amy 2002-2012 Public Smog.

BFI. 1949. The Construction of Heathrow Airport from its beginning in April 1946. Available at: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-london-airport-1949-online

Bohm. K. 2014. Welcome to Heathrow – a strange landscape, not just an airport. The Guardian. April 28, 2014. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/28/heathrows-strange-landscape-more-than-just-airport

Budd, L, Griggs, S and Howarth, D (Eds). 2013. Sustainable Aviation Futures. Emerald Group Publishing

Calvillo. N. 2008. In the Air. Available at. http://www.intheair.es/

Connor, S. 2010. The Matter of Air. London: Reaktion Books

Corder. K. 2019. HOW – Heathrow Orchard Walks, observations and explorations of vibrant land. Available at: Kate Corder (2018) HOW – Heathrow Orchard Walks, observations
and explorations of vibrant land. Studies in Theatre and Performance, 38:3, 267-277, DOI: 10.1080/14682761.2018.1506967

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