The Algorithmic Apparatus of Neocolonialism: Counter-Operational Practices and the Future Of Aerial Surveillance

I first experienced Illingworth’s immersive video and sound installation The Watch Man in 2007. This relatively short film introduced me to a number of abiding themes in her practice, not least how it engages with the relationship of time and trauma to personal, collective, and historical memory. I was struck then, as I am now by Illingworth’s Lesions in the Landscape (2015) and Topologies of Air (2021), with how the immersive context of The Watch Man (2007) ensured that the narrative trajectory of one man’s trauma gave way to a sensory experience that relates to broader communal and geopolitical realities. It is with these concepts in mind, alongside others, that this volume presents visual and textual material relating to Lesions in the Landscape and Topologies of Air, while examining how they represent the relationships that exist between trauma, landscapes, and, increasingly, air- and outer-space. How, these projects ask, do we visualize and engage with the political, social, cultural, and historical realities of communities and environments being subjected to unremitting patterns of resource extraction and aerial surveillance?