Description
Book SynopsisWhat happens when a drone enters a gallery or appears on screen? What thresholds are crossed as this weapon of war occupies everyday visual culture? These questions have appeared with increasing regularity since the advent of the War on Terror, when drones began migrating into civilian platforms of film, photography, installation, sculpture, performance art, and theater. In this groundbreaking study, Thomas Stubblefield attempts not only to define the emerging genre of drone art but to outline its primary features, identify its historical lineages, and assess its political aspirations. Richly detailed and politically salient, this book is the first comprehensive analysis of the intersections between drones, art, technology, and power.
Trade Review"In
Drone Art, [Stubblefield] ruminates on the profound implications of a technology that can, by cross-referencing historical patterns, provide ‘limitless temporal parameters.'" * London Review of Books *
"Stubblefield manages to masterfully intertwine art criticism and critical theory with some remarkably lucid explanations of the actual operations of drone warfare." * Cultural Critique *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: The Perverse Symmetry of Drone Art
1. Signature Strikes and World-Making
2. How to Photograph a Drone: The Nesting Logic of
Vertical Empire
3. From the Ground Below: Spotting Industries, Smartphones,
and the Post-Panopticism of Drones
4. The Animal Remainder: Excavating Nonhuman Life from
Contemporary Drones
5. Showing Sensing: Drone Space and Postmedia in Film
and Theater
Conclusion: Supersymmetry, Capital, and War
Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
