Re-Staging Images of Drone Warfare Through an Embodied Art Practice
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Unruly Encounters: Re-staging Images of Drone Warfare through an Embodied Art Practice Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Kate Fahey London College of Communication University of the Arts London April 2020 Acknowledgements I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my Director of Studies, Paul Tebbs and my Co-supervisors Jananne Al-Ani and Professor Angus Carlyle for their guidance, patience and flexibility throughout my doctoral studies. I would also like to thank Anne Williams and Professor Patrick Sutherland for their support during the initial stages of this research project. I am extremely grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for their generous support, along with the various other individuals and organisations with whom I have connected with over the past couple of years. A list of these is available in the Appendix section of this document. I wish to thank my friends, research colleagues and family for helping me to see sense. 3 Contents Abstract ........................................................ 7 Unruly Encounters: Restaging Images of Drone Warfare through an Embodied Art Practice ........................................... 9 List of Images .................................................. 11 Introduction .................................................... 17 Opening ......................................................... 19 Research Question and Contributions to Knowledge ................ 23 Methodology ..................................................... 25 Structure ....................................................... 31 Hybridity ....................................................... 35 Installation .................................................... 38 Closing ......................................................... 41 Chapter One: Operative Acts ..................................... 43 Opening ......................................................... 45 Absenting ....................................................... 53 Closing ......................................................... 65 Chapter Two: Material Translations .............................. 67 Opening ......................................................... 69 Travelling ...................................................... 72 Scrolling ....................................................... 75 Engraving ....................................................... 78 Submerging ...................................................... 91 Removing ........................................................ 99 Doing ........................................................... 103 Closing ......................................................... 106 Chapter Three: Repetitive Strain ................................ 113 Opening ......................................................... 115 Looking ........................................................ 119 Fictioning ...................................................... 122 Installing ...................................................... 134 Closing ......................................................... 141 Chapter Four: Fuzzy Logic ....................................... 149 Opening ......................................................... 151 Inscribing ...................................................... 156 Leaking ......................................................... 164 Installing ...................................................... 179 Closing ......................................................... 184 Chapter Five: I Could Feel That My Eyes Were Open… .............. 193 Opening.......................................................... 195 Glitching........................................................ 199 Stuttering....................................................... 211 Mattering........................................................ 216 Installing....................................................... 222 Closing.......................................................... 232 Conclusion....................................................... 235 Opening.......................................................... 237 Contributions.................................................... 239 Closing.......................................................... 245 Bibliography..................................................... 249 Appendix......................................................... 265 Abstract 7 Unruly Encounters: Restaging Images of Drone Warfare through an Embodied Art Practice This practice-based research centres upon censored operative images uploaded to YouTube by the UK and US militaries. These images present drone warfare as disembodied, clean and precise. Through theoretical research and a fine art practice of writing, video, sculpture and installation, the project develops a response to the central question of the thesis: how can art practice create an embodied encounter with these military drone images? Employing and recalibrating Donna Haraway’s theory of ‘situated knowledges and partial perspectives’, the research engages with a range of methodological concerns; embodiment, fictioning, posthuman assemblages and new materialism. The generation of this research methodology has been iterative; each of the four bodies of practice- based research assimilated appropriate and useful concerns from the previous one. These decisions were reached through critical reflection enabled by the installation and public exhibition of the work, theoretical research and an ongoing dialogue with other artists working in the field. The hybrid and experimental nature of the practice engenders experiential sensory modes of encountering the re-staged images in an installation-based setting. In these encounters, the vulnerability of human and non-human bodies, materials, spaces, technical processes and sounds also emerge as markers of their agency, interrupting the ideology of technical precision and bodies as calculative entities. These vulnerabilities registered through subtle human and non-human frictions and resistances in the practice-based research generate unruly experiential registers with bodies resisting categorisation and establish an embodied encounter with the restaged operative image. Artistic production in this context opens momentary disruptions in the perception of bodiless and technically precise warfare propagated through these images online, creating the conditions for a relational response. Through exploring multiple instantiations of vulnerability, the research contributes an embodied, decentred feminist methodology and a body of artistic practice that intervenes in techno-scientific modes of visualising employed by the military and which have become prominent in art practice concerned with drone warfare. 9 List of Images 11 1. Screen grab from the RAF YouTube playlist ‘Operations’. This playlist has now been deleted and the content has been absorbed into the MoD’s YouTube playlist ‘#DefeatingDaesh’. Source: Ministry of Defence, ‘RAF Reaper neutralises Taliban bomb factory’, #DefeatingDaesh Playlist, uploaded on November 25th 2010, YouTube Video, 0:51/1:20, accessed November 2, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m63c3W8I-Rw. 2. Screen grab from the RAF YouTube playlist ‘Operations’. This playlist has now been deleted and the content has been absorbed into the MoD’s YouTube playlist ‘#DefeatingDaesh’. Source: Ministry of Defence, ‘RAF strike on ISIL vehicle in Iraq June 26’, #DefeatingDaesh Playlist, uploaded on July 1st 2015, YouTube Video, 0:38/0:57, accessed November 2, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUEsnBtlvmg. 3. Screen grab from the US CentCom YouTube channel. Source: US CentCom, ‘Airstrike against an ISIL military garrison April 8 near Ar Raqqah, Syria’, uploaded on April 13th 2015, YouTube Video, 0:16/0:35, accessed November 2, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uxFUMA4GPY. 4. Screen grab from the US CentCom YouTube channel. Source: US CentCom, ‘Airstrike against an ISIL fighting position April 6 near Kobani, Syria’, uploaded on April 13th 2015, YouTube Video, 0:11/0:32, accessed November 2, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY-JHpXMPdo. 5. Screen grab of point cloud model. Source: Agisoft Photoscan. 6. Screen grab of point cloud model. Source: Agisoft Photoscan. 7. Screen grab of section of bitmap file for laser engraving. Source: Adobe Photoshop. 8. Screen grab of section of bitmap file for laser engraving. Source: Adobe Photoshop. 9. Digital photograph of test of laser engraving on plasterboard. 10. Digital photograph of test of laser engraving on plasterboard. 11. Digital photograph of test of laser engraving on plasterboard with marks from machine head. 12. Digital photograph of laser engravings. 13. Digital photograph of laser engravings installed at Unit 1 Gallery 2017. Source: ‘Inarticulate Landscapes’, Unit 1 Gallery, London, 26th May - 16th June 2017. 14. Digital photograph of latex tests. 15. Digital photograph of latex tests. 16. Digital photograph of faux marble tile. 17. Digital photograph of faux marble tile. 18. Digital photograph of faux marble tile. 19. Screen grab from Repetitive Strain (episode one), 2:56/4:21. Source: Repetitive Strain (episode one), produced by Kate Fahey (2018), digital moving image with stereo sound, 4 min 21s. 20. Screen grab from Repetitive Strain (episode two), 2:26/4:28. Source: Repetitive Strain (episode two), produced by Kate Fahey (2018), digital moving image with stereo sound, 4 min 28s. 21.