ABSTRACT
This chapter explores elemental lures of clouds and the sun by examining recent launches of a human-piloted aerosolar sculpture – the D-OAEC Aerocene. I show how, with the resources of figuration, metaphor and allegory, or lures of imagination, floating bodies become clouds, sculptures become irradiated planets and cloud formations become floating communities. As a foil, I engage with the histories, politics and imaginaries of the International Cloud Atlas. In dialogue with this tool of elemental classification and Elizabeth DeLoughrey’s discussion of the heliotrope, I suggest that aerosolar practices enlarge relations between local conditions and planetary processes. By proposing counter-atlases of the sky, the aerosolar arts problematise metaphors of containment and enclosure, question inherited material imaginaries and suggest other relationships between human bodies and planetary atmospheres.
