(1) Surrendering to False Stars Gouache on paper 76 x 56 cm 2025
I've been thinking about literal and metaphoric surrender for some time. My article (open access), "Surrendering to 'Too Powerful' Technologies: From the F-111 to the MQ-28 Ghost Bat Drone", in Media, War and Conflict journal is an example of some of my thoughts. Here is the article's abstract :
Against a background of contemporary hyperconnected warfare and accelerating advances in drone/robotic systems, this article discusses the airborne drone in relation to concepts of surrender, both historic and contemporary, literal and metaphoric. Drawing upon Paul Virilio’s (2002[1991]) observation that, during the first Gulf War, ‘technologies employed are too powerful’, the author examines how continuing military aspirations for technological speed and lethality represent surrender to the lure of techno-power. Two incidents of human beings surrendering to drones, in Kuwait in 1991 and in Ukraine in 2023, anchor an exploration of literal and metaphoric surrender implications. This discussion is expanded through a military aviation history lens and an art historical perspective. The latter includes close visual and contextual analyses of James Rosenquist’s 1964–1965 painting F-111 and the author’s multi-piece 2022–2023 painting Ghost Bat.
PAINTINGS
Surrendering to False Stars (fig. 1) hints at a ghost-like figure, arms outstretch to the sky. We can 'see' in our mind's eye (imagination) that the figure's face is upturned, gazing into the expanse of false stars. Are these 'stars' airborne drones, targets, memorials, signs of aesthetic homogenisation as the world is standardised for technological operations conducted at beyond-human speed ...?
The upwards gaze is a reference to the gaze of soldiers surrendering to airborne drones and the gaze of people enthralled (or not) by sky-based drone light shows. These drone shows are designed for ground-based viewing. If you were above a drone light show, the choreography is not likely to be coherent or understandable. Unlike fireworks, in a drone light show colour and light are pre-scripted for entertainment designed to be viewed from below. Is this kind of entertainment a sign of normalisation processes that indicate our unwitting, coerced, or deliberate 'surrender' to technology? I have painted crosses over the figure's body - a visual suggestion that technology has infiltrated. Do we become our own prisons? Obviously more can be said about Surrendering to False Stars, but I will leave that to you think about.
Surrendering in All Directions (fig. 2) conveys how our use of technology divests us of our data. As we use our devices, and move about the world of hyperconnected systems and devices, our data is transmitted - who knows where... It's a kind of surrender, don't you think?
