ABSTRACT
Artists have had a key role in the representation and shaping of cultures and places. These roles from industrialisation to contemporary practice are specific areas of enquiry to understand our imaginative capacity for future landscapes and environments. T.J. Demos (2016) has actively called for “ethico-political praxis” in light of global climatic breakdown and challenge and the purpose of this chapter is to set out a schematic of aerial ontologies to signpost future directions relevant to the call from Demos. These aerial ontologies consist of three overlapping spheres – aerial imaginaries, aerial agencies, and aerial fidelity – to which various artistic practices are set. The first is what I term an “aerial imaginary,” which consists of mapping practices and, beyond this, of human topographical overviews of space. Aerial agencies are the forms of influence and process that altitude can have upon the shaping of the environment through a communication or direct physical change. Thirdly, aerial fidelity consists of a continuing fascination in the representation of reality. The aerial ontologies, schematically set, are working categorisations of complex human and non-human perceptions in our environment. These relations are meshes and entanglements of symbiotic or competing practices, at different rhythms of seeking agency in ecosystems or fidelity in the atmosphere.
