Arthur & Marilouise Kroker and Jackson 2bears
After the Drones
"I am a drone called freedom" says the soundtrack, as pictures of unmanned aircraft and targeting cross hairs and retreating bodies and static and explosions flit across the screen. A freedom designed to minimize risk; in an ideal world, no soldiers would even be harmed in its making. An automated freedom, implemented from a safe distance, patrolled remotely, enforced technologically.
This is the provocative technological and political territory engaged by media theorists Arthur & Marilouise Kroker with their video "After the Drones." Produced in collaboration with artist Jackson 2bears, this work is an insightful meditation on what happens when freedom becomes ubiquitous, and when as a result, we begin both to tune it out and to take it for granted as part of the operating system of our times. The automated expansion of ideology in an age governed equally by the possibilities of virtualized war and the spread of networked technologies.
It's as if to suggest the soundtrack to the story of freedom is less a cinematic ballad than the kind ominous silence that results from over-saturation. A static, a buzz, a whirr - first stuck inside our heads, then a drone we eventually tune out. A drone called freedom. And it's easy to tune out sounds like these because we never see or hear them directly. Our minds - like the drones themselves - are piloted from a safe technological distance, and the messages sent are both familiar and ubiquitous.
Watch the video online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OapH6xcXd4A
