Open-weather Feminist Handbook: A Preamble

In the comments section of a post about our newly published how-to guide, one commenter claimed that we made them physically sick, and another compared our work to a foul smell. We noted these metaphors of bodily invasion and disgust, alongside the sexualised language often applied to female presenting voices on amateur radio frequencies (Engelmann, 2021). Apparently, following Sarah Ahmed (2017), our feminism made us ‘killjoys’ in amateur radio. Members of the forum advised us to ‘stay out’. The open-weather feminist handbook is a response to these comments and histories, but it is also an attempt to trace alternative genealogies of radio.

‘Open-Weather Feminist Handbook: A Preamble’ in Vision and Verticality: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Sasha Engelmann and Soph Dyer, 2024)

This accessible volume maps current debates within the expanded field of image-based, vertical analysis. With contributions from astronauts, artists, architects, sociologists, urbanists, visual culture theorists, geographers, anthropologists and more the book signals new moves in inter and multidisciplinary research on visual-vertical thinking and related practices within the social sciences, humanities and across the arts.