Cloudility
- 75pages
- 3 heures de lecture
In theory and political analysis, images are often seen as mere documentation or illustration. However, they can serve a much deeper purpose. This artist’s book by Olga Lewicka explores the cloud as a self-contained argument and a tool for visual critical analysis. Through experimental and meticulously crafted collages, Lewicka reveals the intricate relationships between the visual and cultural history of clouds and significant historical structures within capitalist and neoliberal society. She traces the modern desire to survey, from 19th-century balloonists to contemporary long-term weather forecasting reliant on vast data volumes, linking these to political aspirations surrounding surveillance and big data. The global observation of cloud systems is juxtaposed with science fiction and current cloud research, while historical photographs remind us that the scientific exploration of airspace has always been tied to grand political ambitions. Cloud images provoke thoughts about global finance and migration, embodying the fluidity of visual thinking and its ability to evoke existing and new mental connections. Lewicka challenges the recent neoliberal appropriation of the cloud model with a utopian vision derived from it. The book’s form and organization mimic cloud formation, presenting itself as a cloud that reinterprets the ‘cloud code’ artistically, embodying informal order.
