Spectral Configuration

Multimedia installation with Elie Mouhanna, Marc Abou Farhat, Tadej Fius and Miha Vipotnik | “Vertical Collisions” Exhibition, Station Gallery | Beirut, Lebanon | May 2015

Spectral Configuration explores the vertical politics and mediated materialties of drone warfare. Its centerpiece is a massive, four-meter long metallic body hand crocheted out of aluminum wire. How long does it take to make a body? How long does it take to destroy one? As it hovers in mid air, the wiry surface of this colossal corpse turns translucent as multiple media projections made from leaked military-industrial complex video flicker around and upon it. These electromagnetic projections envelop the silvery drone body within the luminous footprint of world history and militarization, cycling through a series of spectral suspects, framed targets, and aerial strikes. As the Spectral Configuration soars above, it not only senses light and heat waves from afar; it reconfigures and remediates life on earth. Circumnavigating the earth on an endless flight path, the installation is designed to alter our disposition to the sky, the ground beneath our feet, and how we feel in our skin.