Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explores the use of DIY camera-mounted kites for investigating what is non observable in landscapes and/or results from the interplay of bodies, methodologies, and natural elements.

Paper Abstract:

The layered nature of the landscape is a recurrent theme, often assuming a metaphorical character that emphasizes the search for what is concealed and requires unearthing (e.g., Lefebvre 1974; Benjamin 1942; Casey 2017). At the same time, landscapes undergo transformations through ‘rhizomatic’ processes (Deleuze 1987) that perturb the surface and exceed established boundaries, as in the movements of seeds, vegetation, water, dust, pollution; or the tracks left by machinery, human beings and animals on grass, irradiating from construction sites and other nodes of activity.

My field research engages with landscape by acknowledging and making use of a further aerial layer, using DIY camera-mounted kites. Sailing the kite, walking while being tethered to it, striving to maneuver the camera while being mindful of where to place the next step, and of the strength and direction of the wind and its interaction with water bodies, cliffs, and the built environment. The concurrence of all these aspects is a deeply kinaesthetic experience that allows one to ‘correspond’ with the air (Ingold 2013) and, in turn, to become cognizant of what is not immediately observable. Due to scale (patterns in the vegetation, archaeology, etc.) or, in the case of wind, specific materialities that become discernible only when interacting with other elements. The imagery and sound obtained, in turn, offer further grounds for investigation: both through what is directly sensed, recorded, and notated, and through the inscription of movements and perspectives into the camerawork, guided by the play of wind and body.