ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the development of Smithson's conception of the non-objective world and aerial art and the ways these concepts were informed by the artist Kazimir Malevich. In this chapter, Smithson's deconstruction of linear perspective and minimalist sculpture is explored through the methods of defamiliarization and estrangement in the context of the distorting lenses of science fiction and a range of speculative realist theory. This chapter will focus on Smithson's work as an artist consultant for the development of the Dallas-Fort Worth air terminal. Through an investigation of his multi-layered process while working on this project, this chapter explicates how it catalyzed Smithson's fascination with multiple perspectives, which produce a heightened scale consciousness in the viewer. The role of aerial photography is a central concern, as its disorienting point of view reveals what Smithson understood as the non-objective sense of site. Delving into his novel form of aerial art, this chapter investigates how Smithson activates multiple scales of perception, and in so doing, projects viewers beyond the boundaries of subjects and objects and into the micro- and macrocosmic mesh of the more than human world. This chapter thus proposes that Smithson's art is fundamentally posthumanist.
