The Aerospace Image: Making the View from Nowhere, workshop series curated by Dr Noemi Quagliati in collaboration with the NtB – Netzwerk topografische Bildmedien.

In this worskshop series, twelve papers interrogate aerospace imagery through its material, infrastructural, ecological, and labour-driven dimensions, dismantling the myth that the ‘view from above’ constitutes an abstract ‘view from nowhere’. Spanning from early aerial photography to contemporary remote sensing, the contributions trace how these visual materials are produced, processed, circulated, and archived across varied spatial and temporal contexts. Drawing on infrastructure studies and visual histories of extractivism, the presentations reveal how aerial and spaceborne perspectives – no matter how elevated – remain inextricably bound to the Earth.

Curated by Noemi Quagliati (EUI Florence / NICHE Venice), this workshop series is a collaboration between the Netzwerk topografische Bildmedien and the NICHE Centre for Environmental Humanities (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), through its cluster ‘Ecologies of Making: Material Culture Beyond the Human’.

Friday, 30 October 2026, 14:00–15:30 CET (UTC+1)
Operational Images, Colonial Regimes, and Vertical Violence
Angela Gigliotti, St. Gallen: Surveying, Planting, Settling, Repeat. How Proximal Coloniality Operates one Shore at a Time.
Anda Pleniceanu, Vilnius: The Contingent Addressee. Walter Benjamin and the Operational Regime.

Friday, 20 November 2026, 14:00–15:30 CET (UTC+1)
Media Archaeologies of Earth Observation
Matteo Citrini, Bergamo: The Unstable View from Nowhere. Gyroscopes, Aerial Vision, and the Materiality of Stabilisation.
Colleen Anderson, Chantilly, VA: East Germany, the MKF-6, and the Politics of Earth Imaging in the 1970s.

Friday, 11 December 2026, 14:00–15:30 CET (UTC+1)
Selling Spaceborne Imaginaries: Spectacle and Capital
Chiu Hsiang, Hsinchu: Making Lift off Visible. Livestreaming the 2026 Rocket Taiwan Cup.
Chana de Moura, Linz: The Ultimate Emancipation. Aerospace Gazing and the Techno-Elite’s Retreat from the Planet.

Friday, 15 January 2027, 14:00–15:30 CET (UTC+1)
Graphic Assemblages: Drawing and Collaging Planetary Landscapes
Lilian Kroth, Fribourg: Drawing Like a Satellite. Line-Making as a Research Framework to Investigate Satellite Remote Sensing.
Paolo Berti, Venice: An Assemblage of the World. Robert Smithson’s Map Collages and the Labour of Aerial Vision.

Friday, 19 February 2027, 14:00–15:30 CET (UTC+1)
Grounding the Cosmic Gaze
Alley Marie Jordan, Edinburgh: The Paris Observatory and the Artistic, Aerospace Gaze. Toward Cultural Legitimacy.
Paula Muhr, Berlin: Empirical Images of Black Holes and the Situated View from Earth.

Friday, 12 March 2027, 14:00–15:30 CET (UTC+1)
Sensing Environments and Narrating Climate
Noemi Quagliati, Florence: Remote Sensing (of Environment). Origins of a Term and Its In/Visual Culture.
Lucy Sabin, Brighton and Jorge Olcina Cantos, Alicante: Weather Dialogues. Saharan Dust and Mediterranean Winds.

If you are interested in taking part, please contact the network at: ntbkunstgeschichte.org, or register on our website: https://www.arthistoricum.net/netzwerke/ntb/newsletter.