See the clouds

Study about the forms of representation of toxic clouds and the ways of seeing the conflicts.

Abstract

Toxic clouds can be understood as violent events that invade the air we breathe. These clouds have been looked at from a genealogy that unveils the representation mechanisms of conflict, landscape, and both political and environmental events. In this article I will review the representation strategies that emerge around toxic clouds and how these forms of violence transform the ways of seeing and representing war. I will focus on Forensic Architecture’s (FA) Cloud Studies, a body of research that makes visible the violence exercised against and through the air we breathe, that emerges as a way of knowing and interpreting the world, mediated by research methodologies and current visibilization technologies. I will try to answer what are toxic clouds and how have they been looked at, to finally analyze what is the political sense of looking at clouds.