What 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.
Thomas Stubblefield is Associate Professor of Art History and Media Studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. His book 9/11 and the Visual Culture of Disaster was awarded the NEPCA Rollins Book Award.
"Do representations of drones that circulate in contemporary media reinforce or subvert the logic of distance warfare? Stubblefield takes a brilliantly nuanced approach in a text replete with stimulating examples to argue that 'drone power' in such media is always 'distributed and elusive' yet open to reimagination and, therefore, critique."—Caren Kaplan, author of Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime from Above
"Stubblefield’s book is a groundbreaking study of the role of drones in contemporary visual culture. In a series of dynamic analyses of emerging platforms, he shows how drone art's intimate relationship with the hegemonic networks of power is creating a new kind of politicized aesthetic."—Jan Mieszkowski, author of Watching War
232 pp.6 x 9Illus: 25 b/w illustrations
9780520339613$95.00|£80.00Hardcover
Feb 2020