Drone Series 2015-2019

In 2015 I began to examine how unmanned aerial vehicles are represented in popular culture. This led to works that reveal the often unexamined stories we tell ourselves about drones. These stories included: the contradictory views that portray remote killing either as efficient or as cowardly; the mix of intimacy and distance involved in remote killing; the relationship between today’s uavs and the nuclear bomb; the changing nature of war itself, and the ethical slippage that is occurring in targeted killing.

In this series, I developed six conceptually connected installation components. The intention is to combine them in different ways in different exhibition spaces. Two components (Alphabet, console )were in exhibition at Gallery 1CO3 at the University of Winnipeg in 2018. The exhibition was tiled What Flies Above and included the work of Erika Lincoln.

Four other pieces (Falling, Erase, DroneSound, Atomic Bomb) were shown at the School of Art Gallery in February 2019 in an exhibition titled erasure.

My intention wasn’t to make a case for or against the use of uavs, but to frame the issues in a way that adds to the discussion surrounding their use.