Backdoor Broadcasting Company

Event date: 8 December 2010

Bedford Square London

WC1E 6DP

Royal Holloway University of London Department of Geography

Vertical Geographies

Recent geographical scholarship has highlighted the importance of ‘verticality’ – aerial and three dimensional perspectives – in conceptualizations of space, territory, sovereignty and power. Within the subdiscipline of critical geopolitics, this interest has been, in part, provoked by recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan and mobilized though broader discussions of warfare, surveillance, air (and space) power, communications technologies and military hardware.

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Oliver Dunnett (University of Nottingham)
The geopolitics of British outer space in the mid-twentieth century

Recent work in historical geography has increasingly engaged with outer space as a realm for geographical enquiry. In particular Denis Cosgrove encouraged a return to a cosmographic tradition of geography that incorporates three-dimensional notions of space which would not be limited to the Earths surface (Cosgrove, 2008, Geography and Vision). My paper will focus on the British Interplanetary Society, which was established in 1933 to promote British involvement in outer space. I aim to demonstrate how the vertical geographies of what I term British outer space were from the outset characterised by international connections. These networks developed throughout the 1930s despite increasingly tense situations on the world stage, and display a non-state-centred concept of internationalism, united around the principle of space flight. Following the Second World War, however, I shall demonstrate how this concept came to be replaced by the parallel notions of Commonwealth and European space projects, as the technical know-how of space flight became increasingly sophisticated.

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Public Information Film mentioned in talk is here.

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Event date: 8 December 2010

Bedford Square London

WC1E 6DP

Royal Holloway University of London Department of Geography

Vertical Geographies

Recent geographical scholarship has highlighted the importance of ‘verticality’ – aerial and three dimensional perspectives – in conceptualizations of space, territory, sovereignty and power. Within the subdiscipline of critical geopolitics, this interest has been, in part, provoked by recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan and mobilized though broader discussions of warfare, surveillance, air (and space) power, communications technologies and military hardware.

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Rory Rowan (Royal Holloway, University of London)
The Uncertainty Principle: Verticality, War and Disorder in Schmitt, Sloterdijk and Virilio

An understanding of political order as essentially grounded in space is central to Carl Schmitt’s recently translated late works, The Nomos of the Earth (1950) and The Theory of the Partisan (1963). Schmitt did insist however, upon an elemental distinction between land and sea and the differing forms of political relations each made possible. Air-power had already made this crude distinction seem anachronistic in 1950, something even Schmitt fleetingly acknowledged later. This paper aims to examine how Schmitt’s brief consideration of air-power relates to his wider analysis of geopolitics and the new spatializations of the political emerging in the late Twentieth Century. It will argue that despite his rather rusty and distinctly reactionary geopolitics many of the changes Schmitt feared air-power would effect in the relationship between space and politics has been borne out by recent literature on vertical geopolitics. It will ask however if a productive dialogue exists.

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Event date: 8 December 2010
Bedford Square London
WC1E 6DP

Royal Holloway University of London Department of Geography

Vertical Geographies

Recent geographical scholarship has highlighted the importance of ‘verticality’ – aerial and three dimensional perspectives – in conceptualizations of space, territory, sovereignty and power. Within the subdiscipline of critical geopolitics, this interest has been, in part, provoked by recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan and mobilized though broader discussions of warfare, surveillance, air (and space) power, communications technologies and military hardware.

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Christopher Harker (Durham University) – The politics of verticality revisited

Weizmans politics of verticality has been key to understanding a whole series of geographies through which the Israeli Occupation assemblage works. In this paper I want to move beyond this analysis to explore some Palestinian politics of verticality, and how they might interact with the political spatial forms Weizman maps out. I examine recent shifts from horizontal to vertical living  in Ramallah, and particularly the moves made by recent migrants to Ramallah from horizontal family houses in their places of origin to the vertical apartment buildings that have been built in Ramallah in the last fifteen years. While there are many consequences of this shifting topology of everyday life, I focus on changing intimacies to open up the ways in which social relations also  become wrapped up in changing topographies. I argue that there are as many politics of verticality as there are verticals, and that it is always necessary to think verticals in relation to horizontals and  vice versa, or in other words articulate relational topographies.

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Event date: 8 December 2010
Bedford Square London
WC1E 6DP

Royal Holloway University of London Department of Geography

Vertical Geographies

Recent geographical scholarship has highlighted the importance of ‘verticality’ – aerial and three dimensional perspectives – in conceptualizations of space, territory, sovereignty and power. Within the subdiscipline of critical geopolitics, this interest has been, in part, provoked by recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan and mobilized though broader discussions of warfare, surveillance, air (and space) power, communications technologies and military hardware.

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Andrew Harris (University College London)
Vertical Urbanism

The paper considers how contemporary cities are constructed, framed and understood through  vertical axes and dimensions. It charts upward trajectories in not only iconic high-rises, but in  vertical gardens, townships, slums and urban farms, and in modes and methods of urban  transport. The paper argues that these vertical manifestations and domains of urban life are not  simply a response to space constraints and land values but mark and make visible new forms of  social and political power, which disrupt notions of centre-periphery in traditional, flahter models  of the city. Although recognising the validity and relevance of highlighting and analysing spatial  dichotomies between vertical and horizontal urban worlds, the paper seeks to complicate such  binaries.  Drawing on recent research from Mumbai, the paper explores and identifies overlapping (or vertizontal) connections, practices and assemblages in three-dimensional city-making.

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Event date: 8 December 2010
Bedford Square London
WC1E 6DP

Royal Holloway University of London Department of Geography

Vertical Geographies

Recent geographical scholarship has highlighted the importance of ‘verticality’ – aerial and three dimensional perspectives – in conceptualizations of space, territory, sovereignty and power. Within the subdiscipline of critical geopolitics, this interest has been, in part, provoked by recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan and mobilized though broader discussions of warfare, surveillance, air (and space) power, communications technologies and military hardware.

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Steve Graham (University of Newcastle)
Vertigo: for a vertical turn in critical urban social science

This wide-ranging, synthetical paper offers a cross-cuang view of a range of emerging research on the politics of verticality which a^end to contemporary urban spaces. Arguing that critical urban  social science has long neglected the vertical aspects of urban life, the paper seeks starting points  for a vertical turn within such research through engaging with recent research in architecture, political theory and cultural studies on the intersections of architecture and contemporary colonial  power, the profusion of skyscrapers and subterranean architectures, and the proliferation of vertically-organised sensors and targeting and imaging systems within security, military and  cultural circuits. These emerging developments are connected with earlier discourses on the  politics of vertical architecture, aeriality and the vertical view within urban studies, architecture,  cartography and geopolitics. The paper finishes with a reflection on the challenges of addressing  the politics of verticality and aeriality within critical urban social science.

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Event date: 8 December 2010
Bedford Square London
WC1E 6DP

Royal Holloway University of London Department of Geography

Vertical Geographies

Recent geographical scholarship has highlighted the importance of ‘verticality’ – aerial and three dimensional perspectives – in conceptualizations of space, territory, sovereignty and power. Within the subdiscipline of critical geopolitics, this interest has been, in part, provoked by recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan and mobilized though broader discussions of warfare, surveillance, air (and space) power, communications technologies and military hardware.

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James Philip Robinson (Aberystwyth University)
Targeting the vital: vertical visualities and the exposure of the British landscape,  1936-1945

Throughout the interwar period, Britons marvelled at the wonder of the aeroplane, revelling in  excitement at the possibilities it enabled. At the same time, optimism was countered with feelings  of anxiety, of the imagined and affective realities of destruction that aerial warfare could wreak. In response to this perceived threat, civil defence planners instigated the static camouflage project, resulting in the production of perceptively hidden practices and spaces of concealment within the  British landscape. In this paper, I explore the intelligence-gathering processes of the camoufleurs, and their attempts to collect knowledge as to the conspicuousness of key industrial targets  through the systematic observation of the landscape from the air. Centred on the examination of  RAF observational reports, I discuss the characteristics that rendered factories and other industrial  installations as targets, before demonstrating some of the attempts which were made to make  such features merge into the landscape.

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Event date: 8 December 2010
Bedford Square London
WC1E 6DP

Royal Holloway University of London Department of Geography

Vertical Geographies

Recent geographical scholarship has highlighted the importance of ‘verticality’ – aerial and three dimensional perspectives – in conceptualizations of space, territory, sovereignty and power. Within the subdiscipline of critical geopolitics, this interest has been, in part, provoked by recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan and mobilized though broader discussions of warfare, surveillance, air (and space) power, communications technologies and military hardware.

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Isla Forsyth (University of Glasgow)
Shadow Chasers:  exploring the vertical and angular geographies of camouflage

Solomon J Solomon the British artist and WWI camoufleur was by the end of the war a man haunted by shadows. He had recognised the irregular specks on an aerial photograph to be signs of a cunning bluff, trickery and deception which had outwitted the aerial camera. He recognised camouflage.

WWI had seen the emergence of military aerial surveying and thus in turn the evolution of modern military camouflage. By WWII air power had grown in strength and purpose and there was a greater urgency to develop camouflage. War was now being fought vertically as well as horizontally, a game of cat and mouse ensued. Aerial photographic interpreters paid close a^ention and developed a detailed appreciation of vertical geographies to expose enemy military strategy, therefore camoufleurs, in turn also had to become experts in visual literacy. This a^empt to outwit aerial reconnaissance was an exercise in understanding and subverting the entanglement of vertical and horizontal planes revealed by the cameras lens through exposing cast shadows. Therefore, the angle of the suns rays, the plane and the camera all had to be considered whilst developing camouflage schemes. Thus, the story of the World War camoufleurs is on of an emergent and complex vertical geography preoccupied with angles which brought new understandings of cubic and military space into being.

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Event date: 8 December 2010
Bedford Square London
WC1E 6DP

Royal Holloway University of London Department of Geography

Vertical Geographies

Recent geographical scholarship has highlighted the importance of ‘verticality’ – aerial and three dimensional perspectives – in conceptualizations of space, territory, sovereignty and power. Within the subdiscipline of critical geopolitics, this interest has been, in part, provoked by recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan and mobilized though broader discussions of warfare, surveillance, air (and space) power, communications technologies and military hardware.

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Jeanne Haffner (Harvard University)
Flight from modernity – aerial photograpahy and the emergence of a social conception of space

As a technique of representation, aerial photography has osen been associated with “top-down”  urban planning programs initiated by twentieth-century modern capitalist states. This book seeks  to demonstrate that, in fact, the new social conception of space developed by French urban  sociologist Henri Lefebvre and others in the 1960s and 1970s was actually engendered with the aid  of this novel twentieth-century tool of vision. Beginning in the 1930s, French social scientists  working in a variety of different academic fields used aerial photos to investigate the spaces of  human habitation in French colonies as well as in France. The technique, which was closely linked  to the French colonial state and military, helped them to see the connection between spatial  organization and social organization Aser World War II, these anthropological theories of spatial  organization were turned back onto the metropole. By the 1960s and 1970s, as we will see, the  anthropological critique developed in the 1930s had become a full-fledged attack on contemporary urbanism. As a technique of representation, aerial photography has osen been associated with “top-down”  urban planning programs initiated by twentieth-century modern capitalist states. This book seeks  to demonstrate that, in fact, the new social conception of space developed by French urban  sociologist Henri Lefebvre and others in the 1960s and 1970s was actually engendered with the aid  of this novel twentieth-century tool of vision.  Beginning in the 1930s, French social scientists working in a variety of different academic fields used aerial photos to investigate the spaces of  human habitation in French colonies as well as in France.  The technique, which was closely linked  to the French colonial state and military, helped them to see the connection between spatial  organization and social organization. Aser World War II, these anthropological theories of spatial  organization were turned back onto the metropole.   By the 1960s and 1970s, as we will see, the anthropological critique developed in the 1930s had become a full-fledged attack on contemporary  urbanism.

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Event date: 8 December 2010
Bedford Square London
WC1E 6DP

Royal Holloway University of London Department of Geography

Vertical Geographies

Recent geographical scholarship has highlighted the importance of ‘verticality’ – aerial and three dimensional perspectives – in conceptualizations of space, territory, sovereignty and power. Within the subdiscipline of critical geopolitics, this interest has been, in part, provoked by recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan and mobilized though broader discussions of warfare, surveillance, air (and space) power, communications technologies and military hardware.

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Alan Ingram (University College London) –
Resisting remote control warfare online” ‘Shoot an Iraqi’?

‘Remote control’ warfare, involving the deployment of weapons at a distance via electronic  observation and control, is a core aspect of contemporary military practice that raises a host of  geographical, political and ethical issues. But how might it be resisted or problematized? This  paper considers an experimental art project – Wafa Bilal’s work entitled Domestic Tension/Shoot an  Iraqi – that sought to call remote control warfare into question via an interactive, technologically- enabled installation and performance. Living for one month in front of a paintball gun connected  to a webcam and chatroom, Bilal invited participants to fire the gun or not and to engage in discussion. Reflecting on his own brother’s death in a US air strike in Iraq and the role played by  missile controllers located in the US, Bilal asked participants to think about what it means to live  under constant surveillance and threat of death. The paper suggests that this project, which  entailed a wide variety of unanticipated consequences, offers a number of insights into the ways in  which people become implicated in contemporary geopolitics via practices of violence and non- violence.

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Waafa Bilal on youtube here

Event date: 8 December 2010
Bedford Square London
WC1E 6DP

Royal Holloway University of London Department of Geography

Vertical Geographies

Recent geographical scholarship has highlighted the importance of ‘verticality’ – aerial and three dimensional perspectives – in conceptualizations of space, territory, sovereignty and power. Within the subdiscipline of critical geopolitics, this interest has been, in part, provoked by recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan and mobilized though broader discussions of warfare, surveillance, air (and space) power, communications technologies and military hardware.

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Pete Adey (Keele University) – Areal Life: space, substance and ‘being-in-the-air’

On his return from the trenches of the First World War, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner would express a  feeling of heaviness; a kind of pressure pushing in at him, weighing down on him as if the  outcome is in the air and everything is topsy turvy. The treatment for Kirchner, ironically, was the  thin and pure mountain air. In this paper I work and move from a posi?on around aerial space and  turn towards the ma^er of air itself. Both, the paper suggests, are glued together by the problem  of life and ques?ons of how that life can become the object of security and violence. Following  Peter Sloterdijks orienta?on towards the ma^er of air as a point of explica?on between the  human (body/community) and its environment, the paper outlines a project which sets out the  airs crucial role in the suppression of the subject by war, militarism and violence before pausing.  How has the air not simply killed, but filled the body with a lightness and an integrity, allowed it to  inhabit hos?le spaces – holding it together not pulling it apart? For Gaston Bachelard, air is the  hormone that allows us to grow psychically. Taken to the limits of its survival and insulated from  excessive speeds, brought to the extreme ver?cal situa?ons of high al?tude mountain peaks, to  the lows of subterranean worlds and the troughs of new moral and aesthe?c depths  through the  states of lifes existence – the paper outline a project that takes the air seriously.

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