Love Is in the Air?

Abstract

A novel artwork appeared and dissolved in the air above the Welsh town of Llandudno in 2018. Vapour trails crafted by jets belonging to the RAF's 'Red Arrow' team, created an unlikely image for the assembled crowd: that of a huge love heart. This paper re-presents a 'grounded' ethnographic account of this moment - performed as part of Armed Forces Day - for a PhD thesis in 2019 - but places it in a new historical and contextual context. This visual essay examines this creative medium as one able to capture political territories through instilling different 'atmospheres' amongst spectators on the ground (Anderson, 2009: Duff, 2015). Affects included awe and fear as well as admiration and respect. Through my own account of absorbing sights and sounds made both on the ground and in the air, I argue that this display was a strategic response by the UK government to a growing independence movement in Wales, one which has long rejected militarism and the British State. Performed in a post-Brexit period of constitutional uncertainly, aerial theatre can be seen in this instance as 'spectacle to project images of future warfare and national power' (Holman, 2019). The air display created a 'hostile environment' as much as it evoked a sense of collective belonging to any United Kingdom. This aerial performance was one which showed how weapons of war have been used as the unlikely authoring instruments of heartfelt warmth, part of a populist political discoure that invokes displays of love and loyalty through performative threats and force.