Fog-bound: aerial space and the elemental entanglements of body-with-world

A simple journey through a fog-bound shoreline. This paper reflects on such a journey to investigate the relationship between aerial space and the elemental relational materialism produced by fog. It takes the experience of fog as its conceptual pivot, using this ‘indexing’ of air to argue for a reconsideration of the visual mechanisms of aerial space. As a phenomenon, the presence of fog generates a variety of distillations: tellingly, for this paper, it confiscates the horizon on a temporary basis, forestalling the perception of this visible line or ground of calibration. It is the loss of perceivable distance through the opacity of fog that strands us in the momentary instant of disorientation. The initial experience of disorientation is, however, set within a more complex agenda that acknowledges the connective potential of fog to deepen the relationship between vision, distance, and embodied immersion in aerial space. In particular, I address Casey’s work on the incoming power of place and the outgoing function of the body to argue that fog acts as a gathering-force, intensifying the immanent entanglements of body with world.