Helen Wickstead

The Uber-Archaeologist: Art, GIS and the male gaze revisited

This article emerges from collaboration with visual artist Janet Hodgson on excavations around Stonehenge. Experiencing Hodgson at work led me to re-examine how archaeologists think about visuality, particularly in criticism of the male gaze. Ideas of the gaze have significantly influenced the directions taken in studies of landscape and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) over the last 15 years. In this article I expand on and develop theoretical debate surrounding the gaze, using Hodgsons practice to illustrate my argument. I argue for a renewed critique of the politics of vision and cartographic method that assimilates recent theoretical developments. I review accounts of the gaze, and discuss recent theories of knowledge as applied to mapping and GIS. I suggest that new theories have the potential to move the gaze critique towards further exploration of the contextual complexities of visualities. I use Hodgsons artistic projects at Stonehenge to illustrate this complexity.

A Spectacular History of Survey by Flying Machine

The origins of archaeological methods are often surprising, revealing unexpected connections between science, art and entertainment. This paper explores aerial survey, a visual method commonly represented as distancing or objective. We show how aerial survey’s visualising practices embody subjective notions of vision emerging throughout the nineteenth century. Aerial survey smashes linear perspective, fragments time-space, and places radical doubt at the root of claims to truth. Its techniques involve hallucination, and its affinities are with stop-motion photography and cinema. Exposing the juvenile dementia of aerial survey’s infancy releases practitioners and critics from the impulse to defend or demolish its ‘enlightenment’ credentials.

'One Immense Black Spot': Aerial Views of London 1784–1918

Abstract Aerial imagery is everywhere these days, but before World War I, the aerial view had been experienced by a tiny minority of individuals. Focusing on airborne adventures from Lunardis first flight over British soil in 1784 to the Royal Flying Corps, this article uncovers the variety within aerial viewing. Aerial views are sometimes understood as inherently map-like and surveilliant, as if the airborne viewer always saw in a certain way. However, early balloonists and their passengers describe a London whose aspects could be revealed or disguised, elevated or debased, by different kinds of viewing.

Another Proof of the Preceding Theory: Film, Materialities and Stonehenge

The last 10 in. vinyl record I bought was by a band called WE. When WE play, WE wear black Perspex blocks over their heads and identical futuristic black and white suits. All of WE play the same instruments—guitar or keyboard—and make the same motions. All of WE’s songs begin with WE: WE want to hold your hand; WE will always love you; WE will be your father figure. WE are indistinguishable, substituting the collective in place of the individualistic ‘I’ of Western pop. In this way, WE reveal the Western pop canon to be implicated in the way subjectivities are produced and commodified through neoliberal capitalism.