Abstract

Since its earliest experiments with ballooning, the rural English county of Lincolnshire has long been ‘airminded’, a phenomenon initially expressed through belief in the socially transformative potential of flight, but one that is expressed today in a celebration of the colonial, defensive and administrative authority of air power. To many, the area is affectionately known as Bomber County. Today, the area is also home to the drone pilot, to the specialists who operate a fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, located in Afghanistan, from a quiet village location. The county is, then, a laboratory for experiments in a new kind of virtual warfare. AIRMINDED maps the strategic contours of this emergent drone culture. Taking an essayistic form, the film is structured around a flight over the Lincolnshire landscape, a flight conducted by following an aerial chart of Afghanistan, a turbulent trajectory that intersects this site of contemporary conflict with the various historical sites of the county, from the location where the first flight was made to the place where the first bomb hit. By hijacking the county’s visual culture, AIRMINDED aims to seize upon the new electronic space in which the distinction between ‘here’ and ‘there’ is dissolved.