James Bridle: The Right to Flight, Bold Tendencies

Bold Tendencies (Below Frank’s Café, Levels 7-10 Peckham Multi Storey Car park) welcomes James Bridle. The Right to Flight is an ingenious project that interrogates surveillance in the digital age 

The Exhibition

For those looking for something different this summer, James Bridle’s The Right to Flight might be just the ticket. Devised by Bridle, a writer and artist, this is a project about technology and surveillance. It will involve Bridle flying a high-tech balloon above the site of Bold Tendencies, a disused multi-story car park turned art space in Peckham. The balloon, which is a sophisticated military-grade helikite  (a hybrid kite-balloon aerostat)  will ascend from a newly commissioned structure; a of a rooftop hangar, workshop and exhibition space designed by studio TDO. The balloon will be also be kitted out with a variety of payloads from darknet routers (a kind of private internet network) to aerial routers, with the results of the experiments shared publicly and online from June – September.

The back-story

The Right to Flight is named after a treatise written by the famed Parisian photographer Nadar in 1866, in which he declared that every man had a right, even a duty to ascend the heavens. A keen balloonist, Nadar was the first person to take aerial photographs. Since Nadar’s time, however, ballooning has been used for less noble purposes, with the Zeppelin raids of the First World War, to the surveillance balloons in Iraq, Afghanistan and along the US Mexico border. Using an aerostat designed for surveillance purposes, The Right to Flight will investigate ways to return the powers of surveillance and sense of omniscience to the surveilled. In the process will attempt to rediscover Nadar’s utopian dream through contemporary technology. 

Events

James will be writing a series of letters from the balloon over the course of the summer, sharing his stories and findings, and when he’s not in the balloon, he will also be leading a series of evening discussions at Bold Tendencies. Click here for more information. One not to be missed!