Volumetric mediations: Atmospheres of crisis and unbelonging in humanitarian drone documentaries

Abstract Drones have been conceived of as atmospheric technologies that render the Westphalian border fluid and contingent, as devices that create seemingly invisible security apparatuses, mediating human and more‐than‐human worlds across the spectrum from the air to the ground. This paper combines scholarship on drones' military as well as more‐than‐military realms as they pertain to the atmospheres they create in visual culture. Focusing on two films, Ai Weiwei's Human Flow (2017) and Morgan Knibbe's Those Who Feel the Fire Burning (2014), I examine how their drone cinematography visualises forced migration at borders in light of scholarship on drones as forms of ‘aerial occupation’. Querying the extent to which these films can create alternative atmospheres when the subject being documented, forced migration, is mediated by the biopolitical constraining of space and air, I argue the films address these tensions when their drone cinematography explores volumetric, three‐dimensional space with complex heights and depths, attempting to create sites of relationality and encounter between the seer and the seen beyond the top‐down aerial view. The paper contributes to ongoing scholarship that diversifies conceptions of the aerial view in terms of its techno‐political as well as its creative affordances.