A giant art installation targets predator drone operators in Pakistan

[Ichingcarpenter]

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In military slang, Predator drone operators often refer to kills as ‘bug splats’, since viewing the body through a grainy video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed.

To challenge this insensitivity as well as raise awareness of civilian casualties, an artist collective installed a massive portrait facing up in the heavily bombed Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa region of Pakistan, where drone attacks regularly occur. Now, when viewed by a drone camera, what an operator sees on his screen is not an anonymous dot on the landscape, but an innocent child victim’s face.


The installation is also designed to be captured by satellites in order to make it a permanent part of the landscape on online mapping sites.

The project is a collaboration of artists who made use of the French artist JR’s ‘Inside Out’ movement. Reprieve/Foundation for Fundamental Rights helped launch the effort which has been released with the hashtag #NotABugSplat


The group of artists traveled inside KPK province and, with the assistance of highly enthusiastic locals, unrolled the poster amongst mud huts and farms. It is their hope that this will create empathy and introspection amongst drone operators, and will create dialogue amongst policy makers, eventually leading to decisions that will save innocent lives.


http://notabugsplat.com/

[countryjake]

1. The faces of the children who live there...

Since 2004, drone strikes in Pakistan have killed an estimated 3,000+ people. While some of these were high-profile targets, a large number were civilians. Including 160 children. The people who operate the drones describe their casualties as “bug splats”, since viewing the body through a grainy-green video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed.

http://www.insideoutproject.net/en/group-actions/pakistan-undisclosed-location