The Airspace Tribunal and the Right to Live Without Physical or Psychological Threat from Above: In Conversation with Shona Illingworth and Nick Grief
- Aidan Johnson
- Jul 1, 2024
- 20 min read
Updated: Mar 15
Shona Illingworth is a Danish-Scottish artist and Professor of Art, Film and Media at the University of Kent, UK. Her work examines the impact of accelerating military, industrial, and environmental transformations of airspace and outer space and the implications for human rights. She is co-founder with Nick Grief of the Airspace Tribunal (https://airspacetribunal.org/). Recent solo exhibitions include Topologies of Air at Les Abattoirs, Musée—Frac Occitanie, Toulouse (2022–23), The Power Plant, Toronto (2022), and Bahrain National Museum, Manama (2022–23). Illingworth was a Stanley Picker Fellow, is an Imperial War Museum Associate and sits on the international editorial boards of the Journal of Digital War and Memory, Mind & Media. The monograph Shona Illingworth—Topologies of Air was published by Sternberg Press and The Power Plant in 2022 (https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/shona-illingworth/).
With over 40 years’ experience as a legal academic in three universities, Nick Grief is now Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Kent where he completed his undergraduate and doctoral studies. Throughout his career he specialised in public international law, international human rights law, and EU law, with particular reference to airspace, outer space, and nuclear weapons. Nick also practised at the Bar for 25 years, mainly as an Associate Tenant at Doughty Street Chambers, where he is now an Honorary Associate Tenant. He was a member of the legal team which represented the Marshall Islands before the International Court of Justice in cases against India, Pakistan, and the UK concerning the obligation to negotiate in good faith towards nuclear disarmament.
This interview was conducted in September 2023.
CJLPA: First, I just wanted to say thank you both for taking the time to interview with The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art to discuss your work on the Airspace Tribunal, a revolutionary human rights project that considers the case for the freedom of individuals to live without physical or psychological threat from above.[1] So I would just like to start by asking if you can tell us a little bit about the inception of the idea, and how things have progressed thus far with respect to the work of the Tribunal.
Nick Grief: It sounds crazy, but the germ of this idea originated at a meeting that we both attended at the University of Kent in 2016. It was a planning meeting, and I was at the time Dean for our Medway campus. Shona was there as a senior member of her school, and during one of the breaks we found ourselves sitting next to one another. We didn’t know each other, but we got chatting and discovered mutual interests in human rights, airspace, outer space, etc. And that’s what led us to start talking and thinking about this project. I think that’s probably where it dates from Shona, isn’t it?
Shona Illingworth: Yes, that’s the first time we met. We had an immediate connection through our common interests and concerns. The reasons for that are also quite important, particularly considering that I am an artist and Nick is a lawyer.
I grew up on the northwest corner of Scotland in a small community of craft workers that had established itself in a former military early warning station on the edge of the Cape Wrath Range, one of NATO’s most extensive live bombing ranges. It’s a 360-degree range, which aso means that it can be attacked simultaneously by land, air and sea. Twice a year, NATO and its allies conduct Europe’s largest military training exercise called Joint Warrior, using this landscape and airspace as a proxy for places of conflict elsewhere. Up to 20 countries participate in these large-scale ‘war’ exercises, which include live artillery fire, aerial bombardment, anti-submarine ships, and more recently drone technology. Around 75 aircraft are regularly involved across northwest Scotland and numerous warships appear on the horizon.
Most critically, for me, in terms of my relationship with the sky, was that without warning, three or four GR4 Tornado jets could suddenly come in very quickly and very low to drop 1000-pound live bombs on a small island just off the coast. As a child growing up there in the 1970s, the vast open skies of this remote and sparsely populated landscape would instantly collapse into an oppressive lid over our heads. The sonic force was visceral, our spatial world contracting with the overpowering military presence above. It was a complete transformation of our environment through the sheer force of the jets—that level of violence and control.
My parents were part of the 1960s post-war generation looking for another kind of life. They moved to this remote location, also hoping to escape the threat of nuclear annihilation. There was, growing up there, this constant sense of threat. This was a place that had been part of the Chain Home Command during the Second World War, then identified as the site for an early warning station at the start of the Cold War. There was always a sense there of imminent threat coming from the over the horizon.
The military use of the Highland landscape had been an area of focus in my practice for many years.[2] In 2012, I began work on a project called Topologies of Air, during an artist residency at Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre in the Outer Hebrides. I was particularly interested in the planning and consultation process for a large expansion of the Hebrides Range, extending from the Outer Hebrides out into the North Atlantic. The Range is used for complex weapons trials and live-firing and is managed by a commercial company called QinetiQ. I’d read the consultation documents, and it was clear to me that the terms of the consultation were very constrained. For example, the economic case presented was that if the expansion didn’t take place, the military may close the Range and jobs would be lost. Employment and the risks of de-population have long been of critical concern for remote communities. The environmental impacts were considered in equally narrow terms.
During the residency, I recorded conversations with people living there, and undertook research. I was interested in the cultural history of the sky and relationships between people in that landscape and the space above. I became very aware of how modernity’s representation of the sky as open and empty contributed to an erasure of the deeper cultural history of the sky and understanding of its place in many different cosmologies. This act of cultural erasure, I would argue, supports the military instrumentalisation of the sky as a ‘sanitised’ space of ‘unlimited altitude’ for weapons testing.[3]
When I returned, I met Nick and discovered that he was a lawyer and law professor with expertise in international airspace law and human rights. When we met again to discuss my research in the Outer Hebrides and the consultation on the expansion of the Hebrides Range, I also described my experience growing of up in the edge of the Cape Wrath Range. Nick asked me whether I thought freedom from the effects of those oppressive forms of occupation above could be a question of human rights. I said, absolutely. Nick then explained how the legal framework for defining airspace had not significantly changed since 1944 and we agreed that this did not reflect the radical transformations in how the sky is now being used. It was during that first meeting that we decided to set up an international people’s tribunal, which we called the Airspace Tribunal, to develop the human rights dimension of airspace and outer space and consider the case for and against a proposed new human right.[4]
NG: Let me just add a little bit of colour on the legal side. My background is as a lawyer specialising in international law and human rights. In particular, I did my PhD on international airspace law, because I’ve always been intrigued by aviation and airspace even as a youngster. Before I went to university, I was fascinated by the concept of airspace and how airspace is controlled. I was particularly fascinated by the legal regime governing international airspace where there is no sovereign territory below, for example, the airspace over the high seas.
One of the first things Shona and I did was to look closely at the airspace over the UK and adjacent to the coast. We were keen to see how these military activities that Shona has described in and around the north of Scotland were provided for in terms of airspace regulation. We plotted the various restricted zones and danger areas on a map of the UK, and it allowed us to see their impact at a glance. Another thing we did was ask whether there were existing human rights laws by which this kind of activity could be challenged with respect to people’s enjoyment of the space above their heads, as live munitions are being used in these test zones.
SI: Just to add to this, during the production of an earlier work of mine called Balnakiel, I was filming the Joint Warrior Exercise from the Range Control Tower on the Cape Wrath Range.[5] I was with cinematographer Bevis Bowden and we were filming a Show of Force, which is a military tactic used to disperse civilians in an area of conflict by bringing fast jets in extremely low over the ground. I didn’t know, however, that the target area for the exercise was the control tower where I was standing. Within seconds, I experienced three GR4 Tornado jets flying incredibly low towards the building. The rush of adrenaline, the fear, the physiological transformation of my body lasted for 48 hours. It was so intense I could not sleep. I say this because even though I knew that I was not under attack or at risk, the impact was overwhelming. It has been incredibly important for the Airspace Tribunal to gain an understanding of the actual lived experience of the expanding militarisation and weaponisation of airspace and increasingly outer space, by hearing from people in different parts of the world who are being subjected to threats, violence and risk of injury or death from above, and who are often living in a perpetual state of anticipatory anxiety which can cause long-term physical, psychological, and physiological harm.[6]
