Capsule. 2018-19

Heathrow final descent seen through aircraft webcam and displayed in cabin. 2019. Photograph: Nick Ferguson

Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 1560. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Museum of Fine Arts, Belgium

Clapham Stowaway efit. 2019. Metropolitan Police

Overview

Capsule is an art project that investigates the role of the aircraft landing gear compartment in global transfer. It draws on forensic science, architectural modelling, political geography and botanical research in invasive species. The project comprises two parts. The first is a geoforensic survey of the micro-stratigraphy of the landing gear compartment of a retired Boeing 777 aircraft. The second is a 0.7 scale physical model of the same landing gear compartment.  The project asks: What might art research into the Boeing’s landing gear compartment reveal about its role in global transfer? How might it give agency, empirical mass, and representation to the vagaries of the unseen and un-experienced? And how do these investigations advance understanding of anthropogenic environmental change?

Capsule was developed in collaboration with Dr Andreas Hahn, Department of Earth Sciences, Kingston University, and with guidance from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. The research was funded by Kingston School of Art, Richmond University and Arts Council England. It was also made possible through the generous support of Air Salvage International.

Capsule has been presented in the following formats:

Symposium presentation: ‘Building Flying Thinking’. Art and Mobilities Inaugural Symposium. Lancaster University, July 2018. Pop up journal available at:  https://www.academia.edu/37180057/2018_Art_and_Mobilities_Network_Inaugural_Symposium_Instant_Journal_Peter_Scott_Gallery_

Symposium presentation: ‘Migrating Landscapes’. Unruly Landscapes: Mobility, Transience and Transformation Colloquium. June 18 -19, 2020. MoHu, University of Padova and CeMoRe, Lancaster University.

Conference paper:  ‘Heathrow, Sacred Flight Path: Aircraft Landing Gear and the Politics of Global Transfer’. Geographies of Trouble, Geographies of Hope. Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference, London, August 2019. Transcript available here: http://nickferguson.co.uk/pdfs/RGS%202019.%20Capsule%203.pdf

Photo essay: Ferguson, N & Hahn, A. (2021) ‘Landscapes of Heathrow: The Aircraft Landing Gear Compartment and the Politics of Global Transfer’, Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman. 2(1). Available at: https://www.anthropocenes.net/article/id/930/

Exhibition:  Air Matters, Watermans Arts, London, October 3, 2019 – January, 5 2020

Site visit showing Boeing 777. Cotswold Airport, UK, 2018. Photograph. Nick Ferguson

Site visit to examine landing gear compartment of Ethiad Airways Boeing 777-200LR A6-LRC. Cotswold Airport, UK. Photograph: Nick Ferguson, 2019

Nick Ferguson carrying out survey of the landing gear compartment of a Boeing 777. Cotswold Airport, UK. Photograph: Richard Beard, 2018

Sampling material from landing gear compartment of Boeing 777. Cotswold Airport, UK, 2018

Samples. Department of Earth Sciences, Kingston University. Photograph: Nick Ferguson

Dr Andreas Hahn inspecting samples. Department of Earth Sciences, Kingston University. Photograph: Nick Ferguson

Measurement sheet for landing gear compartment. Drawing: Richard Beard.

Nick Ferguson. 2019. Capsule. Digital visualisation. Drawing: Tommy Haycocks.

Nick Ferguson. 2019. Capsule. Digital visualisation. Drawing: Tommy Haycocks.

The work takes as its genesis a short article on plant pathology in which the late aphid specialist HLG Stroyan speculates that aphids found at Kew Gardens had fallen from the landing gear of an aircraft (1981). The plane was bound for London Heathrow, and had flown from the US state of California. The inference was that the aphids had stowed away in the wheel bay, the cavity into which the aircraft’s wheels retract during flight, and had tumbled out into the temperate air above the botanical garden when the landing gear was extended in preparation for landing.

The story’s protagonists are mere aphids. Yet aphids are not easily taken at face value. Inscribed in Stroyan’s speculations would seem to be an allegory of the global transfer of the systemically illegitimate, the unrepresented, and possibly the un-representable. The wheel bay is not designed as a cabin or even a hold, and so that which finds itself inside, whether by accident or design, is not thought in relation to quantification, if it is thought at all. It is hard to believe that, had they come to settle somewhere other than Kew, the aphids would have been discovered, let alone caught the attention of those empowered to classify them.

This incident triangulates with media coverage of the fate of a Mozambiquan migrant, Carlito Vale, who fell to his death from the undercarriage of a plane as it approached the airport (Quinn, 2016). Valite had stowed away in the landing gear compartment on departure from Johannesburg, South Africa, and had fallen out, frozen and unconscious, when the landing gear was extended in preparation for arrival in London. The tragedy, at once historical and allegorical, exemplifies what philosopher Jacques Rancière termed the radically unequal distribution of places (2006), as well as to the air itself as a site of political struggle.

What else, the reader is prompted to ask, might be travelling to Heathrow unseen in the aircraft wheel-bay? And how might commentators – artists, geographers, ecologists, sociologists – begin to represent its/their presence in the air? Put otherwise: How might agency, empirical mass, realism even, be granted to the systemically illegitimate, whereby the precision of finance is set against the vagaries of the unseen and un-experienced? Indeed, how might ‘matters of concern’ (Latour, 2003) be constructed in the absence of the Thingly?

These questions pointed to the need to examine the wheelbay of a long-haul aircraft and to represent it in a way that evoked the space at a physical level. These two imperatives  prompted the idea of modelling the space on a large scale, and undertaking a micro-stratigraphic survey of the landing gear compartment of a long haul aircraft.  Working with a university Earth Sciences department, the right hand wheel bay of Ethiad Airways Boeing 777-200LR A6-LRC was measured up and a sample of material scraped from the inside. The measurements were used to produce a model in AutoCAD and the sample was placed under a Scanning Electron Microscope. The forensic report was drawn up by Dr Andreas Hahn at the Department of Earth Sciences, Kingston University.

Observations

Birds nest inside landing gear compartment of Boeing 777. Cotswold Airport, UK 2018. Photograph: Nick Ferguson

Nick Ferguson. 2019. Digital visualisation of landing gear compartment from measurements by Nick Ferguson. Visualisation: Tommy Haycocks.

Nick Ferguson. 2019. Capsule. Digital visualisation. Drawing: Tommy Haycocks.

Nick Ferguson. 2019. Capsule. Photograph #2. Microstratigraphic sample from Ethiad Airways Boeing 777-200LR A6-LRC.  Mafic and felsic minerals. Image Capture: Dr Andreas Hahn

Nick Ferguson. 2019. Capsule. Photograph #2. Microstratigraphic sample from Ethiad Airways Boeing 777-200LR A6-LRC.  Mafic and felsic minerals. Image Capture: Dr Andreas Hahn

Nick Ferguson. 2019. Capsule. Photograph #2. Microstratigraphic sample from Ethiad Airways Boeing 777-200LR A6-LRC.  Mafic and felsic minerals. Image Capture: Dr Andreas Hahn

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

Nick Ferguson. 2019. Capsule. Photograph #2. Microstratigraphic sample from Ethiad Airways Boeing 777-200LR A6-LRC. Image capture: Dr Andreas Hahn

Nick Ferguson. 2019. Capsule. Podo carupus. (Pine Pollen). Microstratigraphic sample from Ethiad Airways Boeing 777-200LR A6-LRC. Image capture: Dr Andreas Hahn

Andreas Hahn’s geoforensics report can be found here.

Summary observations: The landing gear compartment of a long haul aircraft is a vessel in which seeds, spores, soil particles, bacteria, insects, and sometimes people travel to the UK from far flung places. The compartment thus determines, conditions, and organises matter that is in the air, and hence, the matter of air in multiple senses. It makes available for inspection the politics inscribed into its formal, spatial, and temporal configuration. Thus far the wheel bay gives shape to a set of otherwise intangible aeromobilities, knowledge of which is integral to a nuanced understanding of the political geography of airspace at London Heathrow.

Capsule, 2019. Digital Animation. Digital Drawing: Tommy Haycocks

Exhibition and Dissemination

Nick Ferguson. Capsule. 2019. Installation View. Watermans Arts. Photograph: The artist

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

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

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

Leaflet for the symposium Politics of Air. November 9, 2019. Artwork: Yarli Allison

Nick Ferguson. Capsule. 2019. Installation View during the symposium Politics of Air, during which the work was used as a pavilion/auditorium. Watermans Arts, November 9, 2019. Photograph: Phil Harris

Capsule was exhibited as part of the group exhibition Air Matters. On display was 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 or immersive space which evokes the original, that of a Boeing 777. The prints show samples of material gathered forensically in March 2019 from a wheel bay of Ethiad Airways Boeing 777-200LR A6-LRC upon retirement. 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. The work was exhibited as part of the group exhibition, Air Matters. Learning from Heathrow.

Available at: https://www.watermans.org.uk/events/air-matters-learning-from-heathrow/

Full archive available at http://nickferguson.co.uk/air-matters

References and Further Reading/viewing

Ackroyd, P. 2008. Thames Sacred River. Vintage Books

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

Alvez, Maria Thereza. 99-ongoing. Seeds of Change. http://www.mariatherezaalves.org/works/seeds-of-change-marseille?c=47

Auden. WH. 1939. Musée des Beaux Arts. Available at: http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/auden.html. Retrieved, May 7 2016.

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

Douglas, M. 1961. Purity and Danger. London and New York: Routledge and Keegan Paul

Frawley, J and McCalman, I. 2014. Rethinking Invasion. Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities. Routledge

Fofana G. 2006. Matin de Bonne Heure (DVD). L’Harmattan (2013)

Ginsberg. C and Davin, A. 1980. Morelli, Freud And Sherlock Holmes: Clues And Scientific Method. History Workshop No. 9 (Spring, 1980), pp. 5-36

Latour, B. 2006. ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public’. In: Latour, B and Weibel, P. Making Things Public. Catalogue for an exhibition,  ZKM Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe and The MIT Pres

Miller. G. 2006 – (ongoing). Beheld. [exhibited at various locations]. Available at:  https://www.artsadmin.co.uk/projects/beheld. Retrieved 20 01, 20

Quinn, B. 2016. Heathrow stowaway who fell to death identified as Mozambican migrant The Guardian. Available at https://www.theguardian.com. Retrieved: Jan. 10, 2016

Ruskin. J. 1875. The Ethics of the Dust. Available at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4701. Retrieved 17 Sept 2017

Stroyan, H. 1981. Plant Pathology. Volume 30. Issue 4. p 253

UK Government Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs. 2006. Available at: https://planthealthportal.defra.gov.uk/assets/factsheets/csldiab.pdf