Death from above: art contemplates drone warfare

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Content Death From Above: Art Contemplates Drone Warfare
By E. Tierney Hamilton

A Thesis Presented to the
Faculty of the USC Roski School of Art and Design
University of Southern California

In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
Master of Art: Art and Curatorial Practice in the Public Sphere
August 2016

2

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………. 3
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………. 4
History of Unmanned Surveillance……………………………………………………………... 10
Works…………………………………………………………………………………………… 18
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………… 42

3

Acknowledgements

Amelia Jones, Noura Wedell, Erin Silver, Rochelle Steiner, Karen Moss, John Tain, and Charlie
White: Thank you for your wisdom, guidance, and mentorship during my pursuit of my master’s
degree.
My amazing cohort: Thank you for your friendship and support.
My husband, my family, and my friends: Thank you for putting up with me in general, but
especially during the past two years.
Barney Haynes, Donald Day, and North Pitney: Thank you for setting me down this path in the
first place.
Brian Bailey: Thank you for sharing your work with me.

4

Introduction

“Have we forgotten our humanity in the pursuit of vengeance and security?”
-Staff Sargeant Brandon Bryant (Ret.), November 2015
1

On Wednesday, November 18, 2015, Staff Sergeant Brandon Bryant and Senior Airmen
Cian Westmoreland, Stephen Lewis, and Michael Haas sent an open letter to President Barack
Obama, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and C.I.A. Director John Brennan. In their letter,
these Air Force veterans lambasted the use of drones by the military in counterinsurgency
strategies throughout the Middle East. Their argument echoed critiques that have permeated
public discourse around drones for the past decade. They argued that drones have a
counterproductive effect in the regions where they are deployed: “We came to the realization that
the innocent civilians we were killing only fueled feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and
groups like ISIS, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guantanamo
Bay. This administration and its predecessors have built a drone program that is one of the most
devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world.”
2
They argued that
in spite of the physical removal of soldiers’ bodies from the battlefront, they still suffered the
guilt and trauma that comes with taking an innocent human’s life.
3

1
Murtaza Hussain, "Former Drone Operators Say They Were,” The Intercept, November 19, 2015, Accessed
November 21, 2015, https://theintercept.com/2015/11/19/former-drone-operators-say-they-were-horrified-by-
cruelty-of-assassination-program/.
2
Brandon Bryant, Cian Westmoreland, Stephen Lewis, and Michael Haas to Barack Obama, Ashton Carter, and
John Brennan. November 18, 2015. Accessed November 21, 2015. See:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2515596-final-drone-letter.html
3
Whether this can be called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or not is the subject of debate. In A Theory of the
Drone, Chamayou postulates that this could be a result of a lack of diagnostic tools, rather than a lack of trauma.
“Military psychologists discovered no trace of post-traumatic stress disorder...The [Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition] is of the opinion that the patient must have been exposed to ‘an extreme
traumatic stressor involving direct personal experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious
5

Indeed, the drone program has thrived under President Obama. In his essay “The Obama
Doctrine: How the President’s Drone War Is Backfiring,” David Rhodes lays out the sobering
facts:
With a determination that has surprised many, Obama has
embraced the CIA, expanded its powers, and approved more
targeted killings than any modern president. Over the last three
years, the Obama administration has carried out at least 239 covert
drone strikes, more than five times the 44 approved under George
W. Bush. And after promising to make counterterrorism operations
more transparent and reign in executive power, Obama has
arguably done the opposite, maintaining secrecy and expanding
presidential authority.
4

American politics aside, the unmanned aerial vehicle is complex both physically and
philosophically. Reaction to and adoption of UAV technology spans multiple disciplines. Mass
media venues have jumped on the bandwagon. Both CNN and the BBC have recently used
drones equipped with cameras to commemorate significant anniversaries. Observing the march
in remembrance of the 50
th
anniversary of Bloody Sunday, CNN deployed a drone to capture the
image of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
5
The action was largely criticized, as CNN promoted their
use of the drone, rather than the significance of the anniversary. This was seen as an
inappropriately lighthearted way to treat a very somber occasion. After days of hype, the short
drone-shot video was released to little acclaim. As the drone flies over the bridge, a congenial
voice describes the history of the site, intercut with photos and film clips from the era. The final

injury or other threat to one’s physical integrity.’ Drone operators are by definition excluded from that kind of
situation, for there is no threat to their physical integrity. See Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, (New
York, The New Press, 2013) Kindle Edition, 110-111.
4
David Rohde, “The Obama Doctrine,” Foreign Policy, February 27, 2012, Accessed May 23, 2016,
http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/27/the-obama-doctrine/.
5
"CNN's First-ever FAA-authorized Use of Drone for News Gathering," CNN Press Room RSS, March 6, 2015,
Accessed May 23, 2016, http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2015/03/06/cnns-first-ever-faa-authorized-use-of-
drone-for-news-gathering/.
6

product comes across as contrived. Conversely, showing that the technology can be used in a
respectful and moving manner, on January 27, 2016, the BBC commemorated the 70
th

anniversary of the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp with a two-and-
a-half minute montage shot entirely by drone.
6
The somber soundtrack is accompanied by
annotations describing what each shot is, but no voiceover accompanies the footage. The lack of
human presence, save for two small figures outside the ruins of wooden huts, emphasizes the
sinister atmosphere of the abandoned camp.
Concerns about privacy and safety with these new technologies abound as well. While
hobbyists have been flying remote controlled aircraft since the late 1930’s, a combination of
technological advancements have made drones more problematic in recent times, particularly
when aircraft are paired with consumer video cameras like the GoPro. The range of the vehicles
has increased substantially, as well as the detail captured by the photographic technology that is
frequently used alongside. Of particular concern has been the uptick in the number of drones
being flown over wildfire areas in the Southwest. In June of 2015, the Lake Fire struck an
already drought-stricken part of San Bernardino, California. As of the final update from CalFire
on August 1, 2015, 31,359 acres had burned. While the flames were raging, threatening
hundreds of homes, numerous drone hobbyists flew their craft over the fire, interrupting air drops
and creating an unsafe situation for firefighters. The fire might not have caused so much damage
had the firefighters not been interrupted.
7

6
“Auschwitz: Drone video of Nazi concentration camp,” YouTube Video, 2:29, posted by “BBC News.” Accessed
May 23, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=449ZOWbUkf0
7
See Joseph Serna, Paloma Esquivel, and Joe Mozingo. "Lake Fire Grew after Private Drone Flights Disrupted Air
Drops," Los Angeles Times, June 25, 2015, Accessed May 23, 2016, http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-
wildfires-southern-california-20150625-story.html.
7

Visual arts have likewise been profoundly affected by the propagation of this technology.
Many artists have embraced the drone in a celebratory way, utilizing the technology to create
spectacular works that delight viewers with their fanciful aesthetic. Groups such as
Marshmallow Laser Feast have employed drones in vast choreographed performances, while
others have utilized them to create erotic art (see Ghost Cow Films’ 2015 film Drone Boning).
Other artists, historians, and theorists have been amongst the most vocal critics of the US drone
program. This research focuses on some of the artists who have been utilizing drone technology
as a means of critiquing it. I selected these artworks based on their efficacy in alerting audiences
to the hidden wars waged by drones. While there are countless strategies artists use to address
this controversial technology-- particularly with respect to the ethics of using it for warfare—the
approach which I found to be the most effective was that of Recontextualization. These works
can create the empathy that turns public opinion against this kind of slaughter by asking viewers
to engage with it directly.
Drones are inherently very alienating, and our physical and emotional distance from our
wars in the Middle East
8
makes reckoning with the destruction and loss of life that much more
difficult. In order to have any semblance of empathy, we have to see it from a context which
makes sense to us—hence the need for recontextualization. This became all too real for New
York Times journalist David Rhode when he was kidnapped by the Taliban in 2008. In 2012, he
wrote about his experience with drones in Reuters, saying “The drones were terrifying. From the
ground, it is impossible to determine who or what they are tracking as they circle overhead. The

8
And I do mean our wars—not Obama’s, not either Bush’s. Our complicity is unavoidable.
8

buzz of a distant propeller is a constant reminder of imminent death.”
9
Mercifully, few of us will
have this kind of close encounter with drone warfare. How then, do we subvert the inherent
alienation? How do we help Americans (in particular, though there are many Western and
Middle Eastern countries employing drone technology) understand fully what is being done in
their name, and how drone warfare is affecting not only distant populations but our standing in
the global community and our future as a world superpower? Recontextualization, again, is key.
In British artist James Bridle’s Drone Shadows, he occupies public space in a way that
interrupts its natural flow. In Home Drone, 2013, American artists Heather Layton and Brian
Bailey bring the war home to their home state of Massachusetts by simulating drone strikes and
the resulting collateral damage over a map of the state. In his Dronestagram series, Bridle uses
information released by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism to determine the location of a
drone strike as soon as that information is made public. He finds the site of the attack on Google
Earth and uploads an image of the site to Instagram. In Domestic Tension, 2008, Iraqi-born
Chicago-based artist Wafaa Bilal essentially gave internet users the same kind of power that
drone pilots have: simply point your cursor and shoot. In 5000 Feet Is The Best, 2011, Israeli-
born Berlin-based artist Omer Fast uses allegory to explore the multiple facets of our conflicts of
the past decade and a half.
I will argue that recontextualization is a highly effective strategy for helping audiences
better understand what is at stake in this form of warfare, as it is the most potent form of protest.
Recontextualization undoes the inherent alienation put in play by this technology, by definition
based on actions made from afar, mediated by technology. Further, using the artworks and their

9
David Rohde, "The Drone Wars," Reuters, January 26, 2012, Accessed May 23, 2016,
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-david-rohde-drone-wars-idUSTRE80P11I20120126.

9

respective historical contexts, I will illustrate that this kind of aggression is a sinister form of
neocolonialism that suppresses populations both within the United States and without, from the
self-policing that comes from the perception of constant surveillance,
10
to the suppression of the
democratic will of the American people by waging these wars out of our line of sight (and thus,
making us complicit through our ignorance).

10
See Panopticism in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish.
10

History of Unmanned Surveillance

Figure 1: Norma Jean (Marylin Monroe) holding the propeller of the RP-5, a remote-controlled
target plane. David Conover, Marylin Monroe as Norma Jean holding an RP-5’s propeller.
1945, photograph. Available from: Wikimedia Commons,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioplane_OQ-2#/media/File:MarilynMonroe_-
_YankArmyWeekly.jpg. (accessed May 9, 2016)

“Drones are indeed petrifying. They inflict mass terror upon entire populations. It is this— over
and above the deaths, the injuries, the destruction, the anger, and the grieving— that is the effect
of permanent lethal surveillance: it amounts to a psychic imprisonment within a perimeter no
11

longer defined by bars, barriers, and walls, but by the endless circling of flying watchtowers up
above.”
11

Theorist Gregoire Chamayou’s 2013 book A Theory of the Drone is a general overview
of the problematic nature of drones, covering the history of surveillance and photographic tools,
the ethical and moral dilemmas of unilateral warfare, the absence of the physical body from the
battlefield, and questions of agency. At the heart of the matter is the desire to keep people safe
from harm while conducting dangerous operations, utilizing remote control technology as “a
philanthropic device that would be able to relieve humankind of all perilous occupations.”
12
In
particular, Chamayou looks at engineer John W. Clark, who devised a remote-control system he
intended initially for use in deep-sea robotics. In his 1964 paper “Remote Control in Hostile
Environments,” published in the journal New Scientist, Clark coined a new term to better
describe his proposal: telechirics.
13
“In the telechiric system,” wrote Clark, “the machine may be
thought of as an alter ego for the man who operates it. In effect, his consciousness is transferred
to an invulnerable mechanical body with which he is able to manipulate tools or equipment
almost as though he were holding them in his own hands.”
14
Though Clark’s proposal was
primarily concerned with equipment for occupations such as mining or deep-sea diving, an
anonymous commentator in New Scientist was already looking toward the future of warfare:
The minds of telechirists are grappling with the problems of
employing remotely-controlled machines to do the peaceful work
of man amid the hazards of heat, radiation, space and the ocean
floor. Have they got their priorities right? Should not their first
efforts toward humans safety be aimed at mankind’s most

11
Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone. 45.
12
Ibid, 23.
13
From a Greek root, meaning “technology of manipulation at a distance.” See Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone.
21
14
Ibid.
12

hazardous employment- the industry of war?...Why should
twentieth-century men continue to be stormed at by shot and shell
when a telechriric Tommy Atkins could take its place? All
conventional wars might be eventually conducted telechirically,
armies of military robots battling it out by remote control, victory
being calculated and apportioned by neutral computers, while
humans sit safely at home watching on TV the lubricating oil
staining the sand in sensible simile of their own blood.
15

The technology for unmanned aerial vehicles as war machines was being developed as
early as the nineteenth century in Europe. The PBS program NOVA’s episode Spies That Fly
cites the first unmanned aerial vehicle as Perley’s Aerial Bomber—an explosive-laden hot air
balloon invented just two years after the outbreak of the Civil War.
16
Other accounts cite the use
of explosive-laden balloons launched against Venice by the Hapsburg-ruled Austrian Empire on
July 15, 1849.
17
Twenty years before the first flight by the Wright brothers in Kittyhawk, North
Carolina, English inventor Douglas Archibald took the first aerial photos from a kite of his own
design.
18
A similar technology was deployed during the Spanish-American War by Corporal
William Eddy, who “took hundreds of surveillance photographs from a kite rigged like
Archibald's with a long shutter release attached to its string. Many of Eddy's aerial
photographs—the first wartime surveillance photos in history—provided critical information to
American troops about their adversaries' positions and fortifications.”
19
In fact, when the US
Military acquired its first aircraft in 1908, reconnaissance was the intended primary use.
20

15
Anonymous, “Last Word on Telechirics,” New Scientist 22, no. 391 (May 14, 1964): 405.
16
Larry Klein, writer, "Spies That Fly." In NOVA, directed by Larry Klein. PBS. 2003.
17
Brett Holman, "The First Air Bomb: Venice, 15 July 1849," airminded.org, Aug. 22, 2009
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid.
20
Erik Haywood Stoer, “Flying Bombs, Aerial Torpedoes, and Kettering Bugs,” (PhD diss., Florida State
University, 2001), Accessed May 23, 2016, Proquest 3021532. 63.
13

During World War I, the United States Army successfully deployed two UAVs: the
Speedy Aerial Torpedo, and the Kettering Bug, (nee Kettering Air Torpedo). While these might
be considered more the grandparents of cruise missiles, the basic premise is the same—
automated slaughter. However, the military was skeptical whether they would be able to acquire
enough of the raw materials needed to build an entire fleet, so the idea was seen mostly as a
proof-of-concept. In 1935, the Royal Air Force deployed the DH.82B Queen Bee as a target
drone. In later models, the designation Q, as in queen, would be given to all unmanned aerial
aircraft, as a way to “denote unmanned operation.”
21
In 1939, the first mass-produced American
drone was manufactured: Radioplane’s OQ Targets, which were built in Van Nuys, California.
22

The outbreak of World War II saw a huge influx in the creation of unmanned vehicles. In the
United States, Consolidated Aircraft converted used B-24’s to carry massive payloads of
explosives in a program called Operation Aphrodite. As the plane barreled toward its intended
target, the pilot and copilot would abandon the aircraft, parachuting to safety.
23

The Cold War drove the United States military industrial complex’s and intelligence
agencies’ development of new surveillance technologies into high gear. In 1954, Edwin H. Land,
the founder of Polaroid, sent then-CIA Director Allen W. Dulles a memo suggesting that the
photographic technology Polaroid had developed could be put to use for surveillance. Land
claimed that an aircraft equipped with the proper camera could shoot film which would yield an

21
Richard K. Barnhart, Introduction to Unmanned Aircraft Systems, (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2012.) 6.
22
Dana T. Parker, Building Victory: Aircraft Manufacturing in the Los Angeles Area in World War II, (Cypress, CA,
2013). 129-30.
23
A.L. Weeks, (2000, 05). In Operation Aphrodite, explosive-laden aircraft were to be flown against German
targets. World War II, 15, 66. Accessed May 23, 2016.
http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.libproxy1.usc.edu/docview/222310712?accountid=147
49
14

image covering 625,000 square miles (250 miles wide by 2500 miles long).
24
This is precisely
the way the Lockheed U-2, the United States’ most infamous spy plane, was put to use against
the Soviet Union beginning in the summer of 1956. During the Space Race, surveillance
technology continued to develop, and eventually, the manned U-2 was no longer the sole, or
even best, tool used for conducting surveillance on the USSR. The Corona spy satellites, KH-3
and KH-4, first launched in 1959, represented the first truly unmanned surveillance system the
United States put to use.
25
After taking its images, the satellite would jettison the spent film in a
capsule which was captured by aircraft as the capsule made its descent back to Earth.
26
The
images this program yielded were far superior to the ones captured by U-2s, and the technology
itself remained secret until 1995, when President Bill Clinton ordered the program declassified.
27

This system was not entirely dissimilar from one used for the Lockheed D-21, developed in
1960. This unmanned reconnaissance plane was capable of speeds up to Mach 3.3, and carried a
high-resolution camera over a pre-programmed path. After the the aircraft completed its
mission, it jettisoned its film for retrieval, and then self-destructed.
28

The aptly named Predator, currently in wide use in the Middle East, was developed in
1995 by General Atomics, and was first deployed during the Kosovo War in 1998. The
unmanned aircraft acted as an eye in the sky, gathering reconnaissance to aid manned F-16s in
airstrikes.

24
Larry Klein, "Spies That Fly."
25
Albert D. Wheelon, “Corona: The First Reconnaissance Satellites,” Physics Today 50 (1997): 24, accessed May 4,
2016, doi: 10.1063/1.881677.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid.
28
Abby Hinsman, 2014, "Undetected Media: Intelligence and the U-2 Spy Plane." The Velvet Light Trap - A Critical
Journal of Film and Television: 19-38, Accessed May 23, 2016,
http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.libproxy1.usc.edu/docview/1514166237?accountid=14
749.
15

No more than a few months before September 11, 2001,
officers who had seen the Predator at work in Kosovo had the
idea of experimentally equipping it with an antitank missile.
Writes Bill Yenne in his history of the drone, ‘On February
16, 2001, during tests at Nellis Air Force Base, a Predator
successfully fired a Hellfire AGM-114C into a target. The
notion of turning the Predator into a predator has been
realized. No one could imagine that, before the year was out,
the Predator would be preying upon live targets in
Afghanistan.
29

What lies at the heart of this history is the prevailing attitude of “us vs. them.” What has
come to the surface now is a far less concealed contempt not only for our enemies, but for
anyone who isn’t “us.” This is the moral framework that is applied now to so-called enemy
combatants and civilians in conflict zones; wherein preserving the life of the American soldier,
because he is more often than not white, Christian, and American, takes precedent over the life
of the innocent, but foreign, bystander, particularly if that bystander or militant is Muslim. This
tendency begins rather disturbingly during the aforementioned conflict in Kosovo in the 1990s, a
conflict arising largely from tensions between “Serbs, who are almost entirely followers of the
Serbian Orthodox Church, and non-Serbs, who are overwhelmingly followers of Islam.”
30

Knowing that the war would be a hard sell to the American people if American servicemen were
lost, pilots were advised to fly no lower than 15,000 feet. This made them impervious to anti-
aircraft fire from the ground, but created a significant disadvantage in terms of the pilots’ ability
to see targets. As a result, many more civilians were put into harm’s way.
31
Of the 13,421

29
Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 29.
30
“Religious Aspects of the Yugoslavia-Kosovo Conflict,” Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, accessed
May 19, 2016, http://www.religioustolerance.org/war_koso.htm
31
Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 127-129.
16

civilians killed, at least 500 were the direct result of operations carried out by NATO forces, per
a study done by Human Rights Watch. The Yugoslav government puts that number at 5,000.
32

This brings us to today. As of January 2014, the US military had in service “7,362
Ravens, 990 WASPs, 1,137 Pumas and 306 T-Hawks… 246 Predators and Gray Eagles, 126
Reapers, 491 Shadows and 33 Global Hawks.”
33
Today, the US drone program has conducted
surveillance all over the globe, and launched unmanned or remotely controlled attacks in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, and Syria. Though the information
is incomplete, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has produced the best data available for
casualties of drone strikes:
Country Deaths Civilians Children Injured
Pakistan 2004-present 2,497- 3,999 423-965 172-207 1,161- 1,744
Yemen 2002- present 528- 765 65-101 8-9 94-223
Somalia 2007- present 213-377 3-10 0-2 2-8
Afghanistan 2015- present 1,413- 1,905 75-103 4-18 160- 165

As of April of last year, 38 Western civilians had also been killed in drone strikes,
including 10 Americans, eight Britons, seven Germans, three Australians, two Spaniards and
Canadians, one Italian, and four identified only as “Western.”
34
Drone casualties are frequently

32
New York Times, News Service. 2000. "NATO LINKED TO 500 CIVILIAN KOSOVO DEATHS." Chicago
Tribune, Feb 07, 5. Accessed May 23, 2016.
http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.libproxy1.usc.edu/docview/419005699?accountid=147
49.
33
Kris Osborn,"Pentagon Plans for Cuts to Drone Budgets," DoD Buzz, January 2, 2014, Accessed May 23, 2016,
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2014/01/02/pentagon-plans-for-cuts-to-drone-budgets/.
34
Chris Woods and Jack Serle, "Hostage Deaths Mean 38 Westerners Killed by US Drone Strikes, Bureau
Investigation Reveals," The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, April 23, 2015, Accessed May 23, 2016,
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2015/04/23/hostage-deaths-mean-38-westerners-killed-us-drone-strikes/.
17

underreported, and there an implicit understanding that these 38 are more disturbing to Western
audiences than the thousands (though no one really knows how many thousands) of non-Western
civilians killed in strike after strike. The criteria which drone pilots use to identify combatants is
highly problematic:
“It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as
combatants . . . unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously
proving them innocent.” As an anonymous official said, “They
count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.”
Beneath the mirages of militarized ethics and state lies, this is the
assuredly humanitarian and ethical principle of drones: the targets
are presumed guilty until they are proved innocent— which,
however, can only be done posthumously.
35

This kind of disconnect is precisely what the works I will describe aim to correct. When
Western audiences are given the opportunity to see this kind of warfare in a more accessible
way, it creates a space in which empathy can begin to develop.

35
Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 146.

18

Works

Figure 2: Drone Shadow 006 in Brixton, London. James Bridle, Drone Shadow 006. 2013,
installation. Image courtesy of Steve Stills. Available from: The Blog of James Bridle,
http://booktwo.org/notebook/diy-drone-shadows/. (accessed May 9, 2016)
Drone Shadows, James Bridle, 2012
The relationship between artistic strategy and drone warfare is more intertwined than one
might expect, given the assumption that many artists, including James Bridle, are resistant to war
and its accouterments.
36
For example, the similarities between Situationist strategies of
psychogeography and the process by which drone targets are selected are uncanny. The
Situationist International set forth revolutionary ways of moving within and around city spaces

36
The biggest exception here would be Italian Futurists.
19

as a way to disrupt urban flow and rebel against oppressive architecture. In the mid-twentieth
century, Guy Debord (as well as Ivan Chtcheglov before him) advocated against taking the
routes dictated by architecture, encouraging wandering and roaming off one’s daily path.
37
They
observed, as Gregoire Chamayou does in Theory of the Drone,
Each and every person has a particular form or pattern of
life. Your daily actions are repetitive, your behavior has certain
regularities. For example, you rise at roughly the same hour and
regularly make the same journey to work or elsewhere. You
frequently meet up with the same friends in the same places. If you
are placed under surveillance, it is possible to record all your
movements and establish a spatiotemporal map of all your usual
doings.
38

Debord argued that these patterns were influenced, perhaps even dictated by “the precise
laws and specific effects of the geographical environment.”
39
The effects of the kind of deviation
Debord suggests could be disastrous for anyone under surveillance in a conflict zone in the
Middle East: “Today you have not followed your usual route, and you have met with someone in
an unusual place. Any interruption of the norm that you yourself have established by your habits,
any departure from your regular behavior, can sound an alarm bell: something abnormal and
therefore potentially suspect is happening… Activity becomes an alternative to identity.”
40

In the aftermath of September 11, President George W. Bush infamously coined the
phrase, “we fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”
41
The United States’
military history is unique because we have not suffered a foreign invasion since the War of

37
Guy Debord, "Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography,” reprinted in The Situationist International Text
Library. http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/2; accessed January 10, 2016.
38
Gregoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 47.
39
DeBord, Guy. "Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography.”
40
Gregoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 48.
41
C. Bellavita, How proverbs damage homeland security, Homeland Security Affairs, 7(2) Accessed May 1, 2016,
http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.libproxy2.usc.edu/docview/1266215576?accountid=14
749.
20

1812.
42
The difficulty of invading the United States has served to insulate civilians against the
horrors of war, making them more likely to support it. And the powers that be go to
reprehensible extremes to make sure it stays that way. In his New York Times op-ed, former
C.I.A. Director Michael Hayden insists that this remote warfare is the best way to keep us safe--
by killing terrorists at any cost. “My chief analyst on this,” Hayden explains, “a lanky Notre
Dame graduate, met with me almost daily and stressed that as bad as this might be for
Afghanistan and our forces there, the threat could also come to our shores.”
43

In Drone Shadows, Bridle considers that while many people are familiar with the
existence of unmanned aerial vehicles such as the Predator, few had seen or encountered one in
real life. For the past four years, he has created numerous installations consisting of the outline
of a life-sized drone-- the Predator, the Reaper, or the Global Hawk-- in various locales. The
power in these pieces lies in their ability to quietly disrupt public spaces, reminding citizens of
what could be, were they the ones being surveilled and murdered. Represented life size, the
silhouette of the drone evokes imagery of an actual drone flying overhead, casting a menacing
shadow (in reality, Predators cruise at an altitude of at least 30,000 feet while conducting
surveillance and do not cast a shadow visible from the ground). The white outline also evokes
the pop culture trope of the chalk outlines used to depict the placement of a body in a crime
scene.
44

42
Donald R. Hickey, War of 1812: A Short History. Baltimore, US: University of Illinois Press. Accessed May 16,
2016. ProQuest ebrary. 70.
43
Michael V. Hayden, "To Keep America Safe, Embrace Drone Warfare," The New York Times, February 20,
2016, Accessed May 23, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/opinion/sunday/drone-warfare-precise-
effective-imperfect.html?_r=0.
44
The chalk outline is mostly a cinematic trope, having rarely been employed by police departments, or employed
only in the past. See Cecil Adams, "Do Crime Scene Investigators Really Draw a Chalk Line around the Body?"
The Straight Dope, April 13, 2001, Accessed May 23, 2016, http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2300/do-
21

The first iteration, a prototype of sorts, was installed in the parking lot behind the Bridle’s
studio in London. The second was drawn across the road and forecourt of a Greek Orthodox
church for the first Istanbul Design Biennale. The location of this piece is especially intriguing,
considering the fears expressed by Ben Emmerson, U.N. special rapporteur for counterterrorism
and human rights, that one day, Iran could be “...deploying drones against Iranian dissidents
hiding inside the territory of Syria or Turkey or Iraq.”
45
Turkey has also implemented its own
drones based on the design of the Predator, The TAI ANKA UAV.
4647
The third, Drone
Shadow 003, was installed “on the Brighton seafront… this one a larger Reaper drone, for the
Brighton Festival, commissioned by Lighthouse.”
48
The fourth, Drone Shadow 004, was
“installed in June 2013 as part of ‘A Quiet Disposition,’ a solo show at the Corcoran,
Washington DC, … [it occupied] a prominent position on the corner of 17th Street and New
York Avenue, adjacent to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and the West entrance to
the White House.”
49

Drone Shadow 005 “was commissioned by the Brisbane Writers Festival for Brisbane,
Australia,” but it was never installed. The shadow was meant to be a depiction of the Northrup

crime-scene-investigators-really-draw-a-chalk-line-around-the-body.
45
Peter Bergen, "Opinion: 9 Myths about Drones and Guantanamo," CNN, May 24, 2013, Accessed May 23, 2016.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/22/opinion/bergen-nine-myths-drones-gitmo/index.html.
46
The debut launch was February 7, 2016. The drone “flight was strategic” and cruised at 19,000 ft carrying out a
four hour exploration and observation flight over the Elazig region, in response to perceived threat of expansion by
the PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party) See Burak Ege Bekdil, "Turkish Drone Anka Makes Debut Flight," Defense
News, February 7, 2016. Accessed May 23, 2016. http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-
budget/industry/2016/02/07/turkish-drone-anka-makes-debut-flight/79973784/.
47
"TAI’s Troubled Pride: Anka and Hürkuş." Turkish Weekly. January 6, 2015. Accessed May 23, 2016.
http://www.turkishweekly.net/2015/01/06/news/tai-s-troubled-pride-anka-and-hurkus/.
48
James Bridle, "Drone Shadow 003," James Bridle, Accessed January 16, 2016.
http://shorttermmemoryloss.com/portfolio/project/under-the-shadow-of-the-drone/.
49
James Bridle, "Drone Shadow 004, " James Bridle, Accessed January 16, 2016.
http://shorttermmemoryloss.com/portfolio/project/drone-shadow-004/.
22

Grumman Global Hawk.
50
Bridle speculates that Arts Queensland, the arts board of the State of
Queensland, “stalled, dissembled, obfuscated and lied, all in the service of silencing an artistic
work and preventing a proper debate occurring, either about the work, or the government’s
censorship of it,” because of a recent revelation that the US had been flying secret drone
missions out of Australia between 2001 and 2006.
51
Further, he indicates that Australia itself
was in the process of purchasing seven Global Hawks for surveillance purposes.
52

The sixth and seventh iterations saw the drone shadows return to London. Drone Shadow
006 was displayed in Brixton alongside the premier of Jeremy Scahill’s investigative
documentary, Dirty Wars.
5354
Drone Shadow 007 was “installed 26th June 2014 for ‘After a
War,’ a weekend of events at the Battersea Arts Centre, London, in association with London
International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). The drone is a Thales Watchkeeper WK450, currently
in use by the British Army, and flying from Aberporth in West Wales. It is based on the Elbit
Hermes 450, an Israeli UAV armed with Hellfire missiles, which has seen regular service in the
Gaza Strip and the 2006 Lebanon War. Other air forces which operate the Hermes include

50
The largest drone currently in use, the Global Hawk is primarily used in surveillance. See "Global Hawk,"
Northrop Grumman, Accessed May 9, 2016.
http://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/GlobalHawk/Pages/default.aspx.
51
James Bridle, "Australia: Drone Shadows, Diagrams, and Political Systems," Book Two, September 6, 2013,
Accessed May 23, 2016. http://booktwo.org/notebook/australia-drone-shadows/.
52
Mark Corcoran, "Australia Moves to Buy $3b Spy Drone Fleet," ABC News, September 3, 2012. Accessed May
23, 2016. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-04/australia-moves-to-buy-spy-drones/4236544.
53
Scahill’s Dirty Wars is a 2013 documentary (also book by the same name) investigating what he asserts are covert
operations being carried out by the United States all over the world, including “night raids, secret prisons, cruise
missile attacks and drone strikes.” See "HOME," Dirty Wars, Accessed February 6, 2016.
http://www.dirtywars.org/.
54
James Bridle, "Drone Shadow 006," James Bridle, Accessed January 16, 2016.
http://shorttermmemoryloss.com/portfolio/project/drone-shadow-006/.
23

Azerbaijan, Brazil, Georgia, Mexico, Singapore, and the United States Border Patrol.”
55

The most recent installation, Drone Shadow 008, was installed in June 2015 at KW
Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Germany for the exhibition Fire and Forget. The was a
site well-chosen because of the host country’s ties to the US Air Force. Though there are many
drone operations controlled from the United States-- most notably Nellis Air Base in Nevada--
most drone operations are controlled from Ramstein Air Base near Kaiserslautern, Rheinland-
Pfalz, Germany.
56

http://www.rochester.edu/news/drone/
Home Drone, Brian Bailey, Heather Layton, 2012

55
James Bridle, "Drone Shadow 007," James Bridle, Accessed January 16, 2016.
http://shorttermmemoryloss.com/portfolio/project/drone-shadow-007/.
56
Jeremy Scahill, "Germany Is the Tell-Tale Heart of America's Drone War," The Intercept, April 17, 2015.
Accessed May 23, 2016. https://theintercept.com/2015/04/17/ramstein/.
24

Following a residency in Pakistan, artists Heather Layton and Brian Bailey began to
speculate how the national conversation around drone warfare might shift if the global roles of
the United States and Pakistan were reversed. The primary feature of their 2012-2013
installation Home Drone is a map of Massachusetts being faced down by an 18-foot rhinestone-
encrusted mock-up of a Predator. The map was dotted with tiny red pins signifying “targets.”
Each target was linked by a piece of red string to a photograph taken at that location, showing
the individuals that would have been killed and the structures that would have been destroyed
had a drone strike been launched at that site. The installation also included a mural of “a plant
[blowing] seeds throughout the gallery, reminding us that all of our words and actions, both
positive and negative, inevitably travel out of our control and take root in places we may never
see.”
57
In front of that mural, two monitors show Mitt Romney and Barack Obama engaged in
debate. The impact (no pun intended) of this piece comes from the technique the artists used to
select their targets; Layton and Bailey superimposed a map of drone strikes in Pakistan over the
Massachusetts map, indicating where corresponding strikes would have taken place. In her 2013
Huffington Post editorial, Layton asked, “If we can send unmanned aerial vehicles over a
sovereign country to kill thousands of people without judge or jury, what is to prevent another
country from doing that to us? What would drone strikes look like if we were the targets rather
than unknown people in a place too distant to imagine?”
58
The installation, which the artists

57
Heather Layton and Brian Bailey, "Home Drone: Art at the Border of America and the Muslim World," The
Huffington Post, March 27, 2013, Accessed June 09, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-layton/home-
drone-art-at-the_b_2962643.html.
58
Ibid.
25

describe as “patriotic,” was created to “...[illustrate] how easy it is to be distracted from the
reality of our national aggression when we are insulated from the violence.”
59

Critically, the piece was quite well received, even garnering a feature by Shaunacy Ferro
in Popular Science in March, 2013.
60
Public reception was far more mixed, as Brian Bailey
explained to me in an interview, “A lot of people were really supportive. A lot of people were
stunned and said, ‘I guess I never thought of it that way.’ Some people called us ‘terrorists’ and
‘naïve.’” These more inflammatory accusations were being leveled at Heather and himself
because, as Bailey put it, “There's a segment of our country that I think lacks basic consideration
for humanity and sees American exceptionalism as a license to kill anyone who seems to
disagree with them or doesn't meet up to their standard of human being. It's kind of like the
mentality of people who say, ‘I think we should turn the Middle East into a parking lot.’ There
are some of those people who turn their vitriol towards us as artists, ‘Maybe you're a terrorist.
Maybe you don't love America’.”
61

The giant, 18-foot “bedazzled” Predator mock-up subverts the argument used to sell
drones to the American public, and draws attention to the lack of scrutiny the American public
places on drone warefare. The concept of the drone was hyped as “this wonderful beautiful
technology that can efficiently take out the bad guys: A miracle of American ingenuity and
technology.”
62
The rhinestones bespeak the falsehood of the hype. Layton and Bailey wrote,
“[the drone’s] sparkling surface illustrating how easy it is to be distracted from the reality of our
national aggression when we are insulated from the violence… the glittering diamonds would be

59
Brian Bailey (co-creator of Home Drone) in discussion with the author, January 2016.
60
Ibid.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid.
26

attractive to people who live in a culture that places such value on wealth. It would take further
investigation to see that the diamonds are fake.”
63

http://www.instagram.com/dronestagram
Dronestagram, James Bridle, 2012-2015
In the fall of 2012, Bridle created an account on the social media photo service Instagram
under the username dronestagram. On this account, Bridle uploads Google Earth images of

63
Heather Layton and Brian Bailey, "Home Drone: Art at the Border of America and the Muslim World," The
Huffington Post, March 27, 2013, Accessed June 09, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-layton/home-
drone-art-at-the_b_2962643.html.
27

locations in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and anywhere else under unmanned aerial attack from
the United States as soon as information is released that the area was struck. Records of the
strikes (including casualties) are collected from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Bridle
gives the photos an attractive Instagram filter to make the image more aesthetically pleasing.
The filter speaks to the filter through which Americans receive information about drone strikes,
further emphasizing the alienation experienced in relation to this kind of remote conflict. In this
series, Bridle is making a further direct comparison between the social distance created by social
networks like Instagram, and the physical and emotional distance created by drone warfare. He
points out that “...the technology that was supposed to bring us closer together is used to obscure
and obfuscate. We use military technologies like GPS and Kinect for work and play; they
continue to be used militarily to maim and kill, ever further away and ever less visibly.”
64

Where some-- including the Bureau for Investigative Journalism-- might try to emphasize
the cost of these strikes in terms of unintended casualties (see: bugsplat),
65
Bridle’s images, like
the UAVs themselves, are completely devoid of any human presence. The aerial images,
captured by satellite on Google Earth, further emphasize these feelings of alienation. The
compositions are static, and some are so far away or so sparsely populated that it’s difficult to
read the image at all. Captions such as, “November 21 2014: 4 killed in a strike on South
Waziristan, according to DPA. #drone #drones #pakistan”
66
are the best clues given to anyone
following the feed. Dronestagram may actually help to break down this air of alienation in that

64
James Bridle, Dronestagram: The Drone’s-Eye View, Book Two, November 8, 2012. Accessed May 23, 2016.
http://booktwo.org/notebook/dronestagram-drones-eye-view/.
65
In my interview with Brian Bailey, he revealed to me that the term “bugsplat” is now what is colloquially used in
the Armed forces to describe collateral damage.
66
James Bridle, Dronestagram, Accessed May 23, 2016. https://www.instagram.com/p/sKQ_HMrB3T/
28

the platform allows users to publicly comment on each image.
The week of August 23, 2014, dronestagram posted an image of a single road in a vast
stretch of desert with the caption “August 16 2014: A possible US drone strike killed three in
Hadramout province. According to a local official: ‘three armed men were travelling in a vehicle
along a desert stretch between Yemen and Saudi Arabia's border when the drone shot two
rockets at them. All three are dead.’ #drone #drones #yemen.”
67
Instagram user reactions ran the
gamut, with one user mvpalazzolla lamenting “don't wish for us to be destroyed, wish that our
leaders become less stupid. The majority of America doesn't support it, yet we are powerless to
do anything about it.”
68
Others celebrated the strike, with one user inquiring where to sign up:
“Hi I love drones I want to be a drone engineer when I get older what should I do
@dronestagram.”
69

67
Ibid.
68
mvpalazzolla, comment on Bridle, Dronestagram
69
clay5657, comment on Bridle, Dronestagram
29

http://www.saic.edu/media/saic/gfx/publicprograms/highlights/saicstories/fall2014/bilal_wafaa_
domestic-tension.jpg
Domestic Tension-Wafaa Bilal, 2008
In 2004, John Lockwood set up an Internet site called Live-Shot.com. For a meager
subscription price, a user could remotely shoot animals on Lockwood’s ranch in Texas. While
Lockwood claims to have had good intentions when creating the website--for example, allowing
the disabled or anyone else otherwise confined to their home the thrill of the hunt—
condemnation of his venture was universal. Then editor-in-chief of Outdoor Life magazine, the
National Rifle Association, the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
70
the

70
Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 30.
30

Humane Society of the United States, Safari Club International and “lawmakers in 14 states”
71

all denounced the practice. In his September 2007 editorial in Outdoor Life, Todd Smith wrote,
“[to me, hunting isn’t just about pulling the trigger on an animal. It’s about the total
experience…Hunting is about being out there, not about pulling the trigger with the click of a
mouse.”
72
Gregoire Chamayou quotes a “Wisconsin lawmaker [who] took up the theme, giving
the definition of hunting a strangely environmentalist twist: ‘To me, hunting is being out in
nature and becoming one with nature’.”
73
NRA Spokeswoman Kelly Hobbs lamented, “[We]
believe that hunting should be outdoors and that sitting in front of a computer three states away
doesn't qualify as hunting.”
This sentiment seems to be missing when it comes to our relationship with the Middle East.
In 2008, Wafaa Bilal put this opposition to remote control hunting to the test in his performance
Domestic Tension, also known as Shoot an Iraqi.
74
In this piece, Bilal created a living space for
himself in Flatfile Gallery in Chicago. He lived there for 30 days, carrying out his normal daily
life, but also relying heavily on the charity of others. Bilal “entered the gallery with no food or
drink, and no change of clothes… [he] depended upon the community to meet his daily survival
needs.”
75
In essence, viewers (or website users) could choose to either abuse Bilal, or to help
him.

71
Kris Axtman, "Hunting by Remote Control Draws Fire from All Quarters," The Christian Science Monitor, April
05, 2005, Accessed May 23, 2016. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0405/p01s02-ussc.html.
72
Quoted in Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 30.
73
Ibid, 31.
74
Shoot and Iraqi was the original name of the piece, but was deemed “too provocative.” Susan Aurinko, the owner
of Flatfile Galleries, also feared that “someone out there would take the title as a literal invitation. See Wafaa Bilal,
Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun, (San Francisco, CA: City Lights, 2008.), xi.
75
Ibid. 14.
31

The apparatus, built entirely on open-source technology,
76
took Bilal and his team at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago approximately one month to create. The paintball gun
interfaced with the hardware through an EZIO circuit board. In Shoot an Iraqi, Bilal is highly
aware of the implication of utilizing this particular technology: “Most of this hardware was
developed by the military and then made available to consumers.”
77
While building the
apparatus, Bilal was highly concerned with the other technical aspect of the piece: the presence
of his body in the space. “The moving body speaks to the viewer in a corporeal language on a
purely physical level of unconscious identification and interactivity.”
78
This begs the question:
assuming drone operators able to see their targets so closely that they can see body language,
does this affect their ability to carry out kills? For some of the users, being able to read Bilal’s
body language only whetted their appetite for cruelty. On one occasion, hackers took the
opportunity for abuse, hacking the paintball gun so that it would fire like a machine gun.
This echoes the profound sense of alienation that is reflected in many of the pieces
discussed in this paper. The enemy is essentially out-of-sight and thus out-of-mind. Our soldiers
are for the most part not in any physical danger. Even more importantly, our armed forces are
now entirely volunteer. By the end of World War II in 1945, out of the entire US population of
131,028,000, 12,209,238 Americans were serving in the Army—roughly 9% of the total
population
79
. By contrast, in 2016, out of the entire US population of 318,860,000, there are
only 1,361,755 active personnel and 850,880 reserve personnel—only 0.69% of the total

76
This choice was very intentional. Bilal says that using open-source was “philosophically important to [him], since
the collective, participatory nature of the open-source movement parallels [his] devotion to interactive art. See Ibid.
21.
77
Ibid. 20.
78
Ibid. xi.
79
"By The Numbers: The US Military," The National WWII Museum, Accessed May 23, 2016,
http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-students/ww2-history/ww2-by-the-numbers/us-
military.html.
32

population.
80
Bilal’s piece gives us a change of context that we need because so few of our men
and women in or out of uniform die, or are even involved in, our current conflicts. Very few
people have a dog in the fight.
In a taped interview promoting his book Shoot an Iraqi: Life, Art, And Resistance Under
the Gun, Bilal speaks of the 2004 deaths of his brother and father. “Since then,” Bilal says, “I
was thinking of building an art project that engaged people… using the media that’s available to
us… the Internet.”
81
In 2007, Bilal became aware of an interview with a drone pilot. “When she
was asked if she felt any regret over the death of Iraqis,” explains Bilal, “She said ‘No. These
people are terrorists and I trust my government.’ And it hit me right away that we’ve become so
disconnected from the conflict zone, and we live in our own comfort zone. And that gave me the
idea. The idea was ‘Shoot an Iraqi.’ I would live in the gallery for 30 days with a paintball gun
aimed at me, and the paintball gun is controlled by people online.”
82
By the end of the
performance, Bilal had been shot more than 60,000 times. The piece’s website had over 80
million hits. The site’s chatroom had over 30,000 unique participants.
83

“This project changed my life forever,” says Bilal in the promotional video for Shoot an
Iraqi.
84
In spite of the cruel hackers who turned his paintball gun into a machine gun, and the
vicious comments in the chatroom, such as: “Come out and get shot little man… Those are cum
shots on the glass… fuck and kill… Waterboard him, make him talk…THERE HE IS!!!!

80
"Department of Defense (DoD) Releases Fiscal Year 2017 President’s Budget Proposal," US Department of
Defense, February 9, 2016, Accessed May 23, 2016, http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-
View/Article/652687/department-of-defense-dod-releases-fiscal-year-2017-presidents-budget-proposal.
81
“Wafaa Bilal discusses Shoot an Iraqi,” YouTube video, 2:21, posted by “CityLightsBooks,” July 23, 2008,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcyquvDEe0o.
82
Ibid.
83
Much of this was due to a huge surge in popularity when the Chicago Tribune article about his piece hit the front
page of Digg.com. See Bilal, Shoot An Iraqi p. 79
84
Ibid.
33

SHOOT HIM!!!...Where is that fag Iraqi?...Where’s the towelhead?”
85
Bilal is ultimately
optimistic. He has stated: “It gives me hope in humanity, and it gives me hope that when we
build a platform for people to have a conversation, they will come and participate.”
86
In this
piece, Bilal created the conversation that needs to exist in order to create an environment of
empathy, rather than one of fear and anger.

Figure 6: Still from 5,000 Feet Is The Best. Omer Fast, 5,000 Feet Is The Best, 2013, video.
http://commonwealth-projects.com/project/omer-fast-5000-feet-is-the-best/commonwealth-
projects-omer-fast-5000-feet-is-the-best-film-stills-2/

85
Ibid, 82.
86
Ibid.
34

5000 Feet Is Best, Omer Fast, 2013
Omer Fast’s 2013 short film 5000 Feet Is The Best is a combination of documentary and
allegory. It consists of recorded interviews with a former US drone pilot used as voiceover over
footage of various parts of the United States-- using the visual language of surveillance—intercut
with a dramatized interview with a fictional drone pilot telling allegorical stories to a foreign
journalist inside a Las Vegas hotel room.
87

As the film opens, the fictional interviewer asks the fictional pilot, “what is the difference
between you and someone who sits in an airplane?” “There is no difference,” replies the pilot.
“We do the same job.” The interviewer presses him. “But you’re not a real pilot.” The pilot
snaps back, “You’re thinking about bodies and places. Euclidean shit. Like train drivers in the
1880’s.” Each of the three segments with the fictional interviewer and pilot begins with a similar
back-and-forth. This back-and-forth leads the audience into the allegorical story the pilot tells.
The footage for these stories is shot entirely in Las Vegas. The first story is about a “guy who
loved trains…a forty-year old guy, harmless, maybe a little retarded.”
The pilot tells the story of a train-obsessed man who teaches himself all there is to know
about the locomotive. One day, he sneaks into the drivers’ lounge, breaks into a locker, and
steals a uniform. Disguised, the man hops into the control booth on the train and operates it all
day with no trouble whatsoever. No one even notices that he is not a real engineer. At the end
of the day, the man returns to his home only to discover that he has left his house keys in the
locker that he broke into earlier. Desperate, he climbs into his house through a window.
Someone sees him and-- presumably because of the man’s race -- assumes that he is breaking

87
The setting of Las Vegas is no accident—the majority of drone operations are conducted from Creech Air Force
Base in Nevada.
35

into the house. The police are called. The interviewer assumes that the police were called
because of the man’s race, but the pilot is calculated in not mentioning the man’s race at all,
stating that the moral of the story, which is entirely relevant to piloting drones, is “you keep your
work life and your personal life separate.”
“Experts” on boundaries between personal and professional life advocate this advice ad
nauseum, but for military personnel preventing the bleed between their duty and their personal
life can be especially tricky. The work of drone pilots consists mostly of hours upon hours of
mind-numbing drudgery:
Though strikes on suspected terrorists and the resulting civilian casualties get the
headlines, the lion's share of remote piloting consists of quieter, more shadowy work: hour after
hour of ISR—intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Sitting in ergonomic chairs in
ground control stations—essentially souped-up shipping containers—RPA [Remotely Piloted
Aircraft] operators coordinate with ground intel to identify human targets, then track them with
high-powered zoom lenses and sophisticated sensors.
88

These hours of monotony are occasionally punctuated by the drama and pressure of the airstrike-
- the sudden demand on the operator for surgical precision at a moment’s notice when the order
is given. There is no room for error. Keeping one’s work life and personal life separate is hard
enough for civilians, but for someone whose duty and country come before self, separating the
two is nearly impossible. And this is that operator’s daily life until they are reassigned or
discharged.
The film cuts to the voiceover of the real drone pilot describing the accuracy of drone
cameras at an altitude of 5,000 feet. The image is an overhead shot, visually similar to that of a
drone or perhaps a helicopter, of a small figure riding a bike through the desert. Based on the
context of the voiceover, it would seem that the desert is somewhere far away, perhaps Yemen or

88
Elijah Solomon Hurwitz, "Drone Pilots: Overpaid, Underworked, and Bored," Mother Jones, June 18, 2013,
Accessed May 25, 2016, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/drone-pilots-reaper-photo-essay.
36

Iraq. We see though that the child is actually riding his bike in a suburb outside of Las Vegas.
This plays with our expectations of what a desert landscape could mean, and creates a
compelling juxtaposition of the deserts of the American Southwest where the attacks are being
launched from, and the Middle East, where the attacks are directed.
The next allegorical motif is about “bodies and trenches. Rats running around. Mustard
gas. World War One.” It is told through the story of a man and a woman conducting an
elaborate scam at the Luxor Hotel. The couple would “…check into hotels with this one big
suitcase full of trousers: Blue jeans, chinos, slacks, you name it. A whole selection of labels and
sizes. The man would hang them up in the shower… The woman would dress up for business
and put on a nametag like she’s in town for a conference… And she’d cruise the casino, alone,
prowling around for the right target.”
According to the story, the woman then brings her prey back up to the hotel room under
the pretenses of sleeping with him. While she is seducing him, she switches his pants with one
of the many pairs in the bathroom. At some point, her male counterpart returns to the room and
“[pretends] to discover them.” A fight ensues, and the victim is cast out into the hallway either
with the swapped pair of pants or none at all. “For most men,” says the pilot, “being caught with
their pants down is so mortifying that they would rather lose their wallet than hang around naked
in a hotel corridor.”
Of all the stories in this film, this is perhaps the most obvious and simplest to analyze—if
for no other reason because the victims of the scam were caught literally with their pants down.
In spite of suffering a humiliating loss, the victims of the scam did not want to be seen as losers.
37

Similarly, after suffering the national black eyes that were the Vietnam War, the a bizarre kind
of nationalism has kept the United States from admitting defeat in the Middle East.
89

What then do we make of the female con artist in this story, seducing the unsuspecting
victim who is supposed to be a stand-in for the United States? She could, perhaps, represent the
irresistible allure of resources in an exotic land.
The film cuts to a helicopter shot of a small hamlet. The voiceover is once again that of
the real drone pilot interview. As the camera zooms in on a church in this small hamlet, the pilot
recalls the tedious monotony of his job, which sometimes involved watching the same spot for
months at a time. He also reflects on the virtual post traumatic stress he experienced: “There was
so much loss of life as a direct result of me,” Brandon, the real drone pilot expresses, his voice
full of regret. Brandon avoids directly stating that he killed people, an illustration of the level of
removal he had from the actual field of battle. He sought help for the mental disturbance he
experienced as a result of his actions, but the Army Chaplain simply reassured Brandon that if it
was not he who was doing it, “some new kid would be doing it, but worse.”

89
For example, our involvement in Iraq dates back to the mid-20
th
century. Following the revolution of 1958 and
the subsequent revolutions in 1963, 1968, and 1979, the US continued to maintain relations with Iraq in order to
secure resources (see: oil) and contain the spread of communism in the Middle East. When the secular Saddam
Hussein came into power during the 1979 revolution, the US was more than happy to prop up the dictator in spite of
his well-known despotism and human rights abuses, particularly in the Iran-Iraq War from 1980-1988. The first
Bush Administration maintained friendly relations with the regime, offering economic incentives to prevent Hussein
from invading neighboring Kuwait, which he did in 1990. Following the first Gulf War, containment became the
primary means of dealing with Saddam Hussein and worked well until the second invasion of Iraq on faulty
intelligence of weapons of mass destruction in 2003. Following the transfer of power to Iraq’s democratically
elected government under Shia president Nuri al-Maliki, US troops begin to withdraw from Iraq. By now, the US
was exhausted of conflict in the Middle East and takes a position of non-involvement in Iraqi affairs, particularly
when al-Maliki began oppressing Iraq’s Sunni minority. This is what eventually leads to rise of ISIS, bringing the
US back into the territory. Is the Middle East something we just can’t quit, or are we unable to admit defeat? See
Peter Hahn, "A Century of U.S. Relations with Iraq,” Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, April 2012,
Accessed November 07, 2016, http://origins.osu.edu/article/century-us-relations-iraq.

38

Frequently, drone warfare is compared to contemporary video games like the Call of
Duty series. In fact, Brandon mentions that, much to his surprise, he and many of his fellow
pilots, after staring at their targets all day, will then go home and play video games. However,
Brandon reflects, “[i]t’s not like a video game. I can’t switch it off.”
Finally, the film returns to the final iteration of the dramatized interview with the drone
pilot. This allegory is perhaps the most poignantly told, and illustrated in a way that makes it
directly relatable to an American viewer. “You’re talking about Orville and Wilbur. Kittyhawk.
The Red Baron…whatever, ” the pilot snaps back to the journalist when he is accused of not
being a real pilot. “Mom, Dad, Johnny, and little Zoe are taking a trip,” begins the pilot. The
film cuts to suburban California, where a family is packing up their station wagon for a vacation.
“Let’s say it’s the weekend and the family loves the outdoors. Or maybe they need to get away
for a while because of problem’s Dad’s having with the provisional authority. Either way, on a
bright Friday morning, they pack up the station wagon with food and blankets and good stuff for
the long drive—and they leave their house. Locked. For good.” The family backs out of the
driveway and makes their way to a barbed-wire and orange cone adorned checkpoint. The
checkpoint is manned by Chinese soldiers, who eye “dad” suspiciously as they check over his
paperwork. The family is waved through, and they make their way down the freeway and
eventually onto dirt back roads.
“The drive is long—the trip is boring. Pretty soon everyone is passed out in the car
except for dad. Mom has a map in her bag—somewhere in the back—but dad is a proud, caring
husband and he doesn’t want to wake her. In these parts of the country it’s hard to get lost
39

anyway. There’s one road and it snakes along up the mountains forever. Insha’allah
90
we’ll get
there… The car bumps along at a much slower pace when dad suddenly sees several men up
ahead.” The camera cuts to a small group of what might best be described as highly
stereotypical rednecks. One of the men sports a mustache and a mullet under a cap. The others
wear beat up denim and other typical attire. They are standing near a beat up old pick up truck
(“something very common to the folks who live out here in the middle of nowhere”), and all
appear to be digging and filling in a hole just to the side of the road. “It’s not strange to see
farmers out here,” the pilot says, “although these guys are not in a field and there’s no sign
saying there’s road work ahead.”
“[The men] step onto the road and watch as the family gets nearer. Dad can see that one
of them has a shovel and the other two have some sticks or working tools or maybe sticks. Are
they shepherds?” At this point, as the narrative continues, we realize that while the story that is
being told is clearly about a family in an occupied Middle Eastern country, the visuals depicting
the white American family work just as well. “There are no goats anywhere. No sheep. No
camels. The earth on the side of the road is like hard clay.” The comparison between what we
might consider backwoods in the United States and the more isolated populations in tribal areas
of Afghanistan is uncanny. For example, both populations tend toward religiosity, like those in
America’s so-called Bible Belt. Both populations tend toward a mistrust of government and
other authorities. Given the rhetoric of the Tea Party, under the rule of an occupying power, is it
not probable that these would be exactly the people to carry around guerilla warfare against their
occupiers? We have seen this happen in two recent, headline-grabbing incidents

90
Arabic for “God willing,” or “If Allah wills it.”
40

“Dad stops the car about 50 feet away. He can see the men very clearly now. The one
with the shovel is younger—almost a teenager. He wears a traditional headdress…And they’re
all armed with Kalashnikovs.” The camera cuts from this scene to an overhead shot in black and
white video. Chinese script and numbers border the image. The feed is coming from a drone
flying directly over this scene. The camera cuts back to the view from the ground. “Dad looks
at the men… He knows who they are and what they are doing. But he doesn’t care…He just
wants to be allowed to pass and is not looking for trouble… Dad passes the men slowly and then
steps on the gas. The crisis is over.” The camera cuts back to the shot from the overhead drone.
“Just then, a shrieking sound pierces the still air… The Hellfire missile hits the ground before
anyone can react, nearly vaporizing the three men on impact… the station wagon isn’t spared…
Seeing the world from above doesn't just flatten things. It sharpens them. It makes relationships
clearer. The family continues their journey. Their bodies will never be buried.” The camera
cuts back to the family, broken and bloodied, who exit the car and continue down the abandoned
road.
This final segment of 5000 Feet Is The Best is the most compelling form of
recontextualization of this film, and possibly of any of the other pieces discussed in this research.
The burden of being the most powerful economic and military force in the world is that there is
always someone more eager coming from behind and trying to pass you. With its gargantuan
population, powerful economy, and large military, latent fears about a Chinese hyperpower
persist. We fear that China might treat us the way we have treated other nations throughout our
history-- as a means to an end.
At the end of the film, the pilot ends his allegory and steps out of the hotel room. The
film ends with a helicopter shot of the Las Vegas strip at night, with a last voiceover from
41

Brandon, the real drone pilot interviewed for this piece. He reflects on the first time he killed
someone:
I was checking routes for IED’s… it was night here in Vegas and it
was daytime there… I’m seeing a little guy smoking on the roof.
And this wannabe terrorist is just sitting there and he’s being real
slick. Not even moving. Just looking around constantly. Waiting
for a Humvee or a military vehicle to show up to detonate. And
there’s… four or five guys…You can tell they’re up to no good.
That there is an ambush. So we call it in then we’re given all the
clearances… And then we did something called “The Light of
God.”…It’s our laser targeting marker. We just send down a beam
of laser and when the troops put on their nightvision goggles
they’ll just see this light that looks like it’s coming from
Heaven…And we fired off a Hellfire missile and got the target… It
didn’t quite stand in to me,” Hey! I just killed someone!” My first
time. It was within my first year there. It didn’t quite impact…it
was later on through a couple of mission that the dreams started.
91

91
5,000 Feet Is The Best
42

Conclusion

Low Drone, Angel Nevarez and Alex Rivera, 2005
While most of the works this research has been concerned with focus on our wars in the
Middle East, it is important to acknowledge the artists and works that are addressing the
domestic use of drones in the US. In 2005, Alex Rivera and Angel Nevarez did so with a more
light-hearted but nonetheless powerful and subversive intervention they called the Low Drone. It
was a public intervention piece that combined aspects of Mexican-American Lowrider culture,
the singling out and victimization of Mexican-Americans--in particular pachucos
92
-- and the
debate surrounding the use of drones along the US/Mexico border. The war is not strictly one

92
Identified in the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular culture as “Latino street rebels of the 1940s who innovated a
style and attitude that expressed their defiance of mainstream America. Dressed… in zoot suits and adorned with
pompadour haircuts, they hung out on the streets of East Los Angeles… asserting their difference. See Candida
Taylor, "Pachucos," St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Ed. Thomas Riggs, 2nd ed, Vol. 4, (Detroit: St.
James Press, 2013.) 86-87, Gale Virtual Reference Library, Accessed May 23, 2016, Web.
43

against “terrorism,” it is a war against cultures that threaten white American hegemony.
Since the Mexican Cession of 1848, the US government has engaged in a policy of
monitoring and suppressing Mexican and other Latino populations. In his book, Lynching in the
West: 1850-1935, Ken Gonzales-Day describes the rash of lynchings committed against
individuals perceived as Mexican over a period of almost a century. The 132 lynchings that he
describes occurred at least partly because the authorities allowed for (and at the local level often
participated in) mob rule and so-called “frontier justice.”
93
Turning a blind eye to these crimes
allowed for a kind of effortless suppression. Later, in the 1950s, during the height of
McCarthyism, “Mexican American activists working for civil rights were harassed, intimidated,
vilified and indicted as subversives.”
94
The rise of conservative media in the 1980s, particularly
talk radio, gave xenophobes a platform to further fuel white Americans’ fears of Latin
Americans. Hosts like Rush Limbaugh have built their brand over the past 30 years on, among
other things,
95
claims that Latino migrants are coming over the border from Mexico to infiltrate
the American labor force, pushing white Americans out.
96
Low Drone is a response to the past
century-and-a-half of oppression of Latino communities along and inside the US border.

93
Ken Gonzales-Day, Lynching in the West : 1850–1935, (Durham, US: Duke University Press Books, 2014), 26.
94
Zaragosa Vargas, "Mexican Americans Caught in 50s 'Witch Hunt,'" The Center for the Humanities, Accessed
May 23, 2016, http://oregonstate.edu/dept/humanities/mexican-americans-caught-50s-039witch-hunt039.
95
In the abstract for their pilot study “Toward an empirical analysis of hate speech on commercial talk radio,” Chon
Noriega and and Francisco Javier Ibarren found that on commercial talk radio, the rhetoric comprised “the
systematic use of unsubstantiated claims, divisive language, and nativist code words. For example, Latino
immigrants were often coded as criminals and then linked to social institutions that were presented as complicit with
immigrants. In this way, target groups were characterized as a powerful and direct threat to the nation.” See Chon
Noriega and Francisco Javier Ibarren, (2013), TOWARD AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF HATE SPEECH ON
COMMERCIAL TALK RADIO, Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy, 25, 69-96, Accessed May 24, 2016,
Retrieved from
http://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.libproxy2.usc.edu/docview/1620819678?accountid=14
749.
96
"Immigration Issues," Illegal Aliens Taking U.S. Jobs, 2013, Accessed May 24, 2016,
http://www.fairus.org/issue/illegal-aliens-taking-u-s-jobs.
44

Technically illegal, the tiny quadcopter drone consists of a miniature garish gold 1937
Ford Coupe on a bright fuchsia velvet pedestal, chrome-plated turbines under the copter blades,
and a video system to allow live streaming. With a promise that they will not report the Low
Drone to the authorities, users could log onto a bi-lingual website--http://www.lowdrone.com--
and control the drone remotely. Users were encouraged to fly the vehicle back and forth over the
border, challenging and teasing the authorities. The control interface contains keys to start the
drone, custom steering wheel, and a radio playing clips of news broadcasts relating to the use of
drones in border security and immigration policy. The drone is no longer in operation, but users
can simulate the experience of flying the drone with a pre-made sequence that plays on the
website. There are also numerous screen captures and photos of the drone in action, including
close encounters with border patrol.
Nevarez and Rivera also feature a timeline on the website, showing the parallel between
the development of drones and the persecution of Mexican-American youth throughout the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The timeline shows the paths of remote-controlled aircraft
97

and Mexican American subcultures
98
until the two meet at the intersection of the Low Drone in
2005. The timeline for remote controlled aircraft begins in 1937 with the invention of the Queen
Bee, while the timeline for Mexican-American pachuco culture begins in 1940. Because we

97
Nevarez and Rivera claim the British Queen Bee as the first radio-controlled aircraft. Though the US and British
militaries researched UAVs for decades before the Queen Bee, she did have the honor of being “the first returnable
and reusable UAV… designed for use as an aerial target during training missions. Anti-aircraft gunners in the Royal
Navy practiced shooting them down at first sight. The spruce-and-plywood biplanes first flew in 1935 and bore
wheels (for launch from an airfield) or floats (for use at sea). The Queen Bee…could fly as high as 17,000 feet and
travel a maximum distance of 300 miles at over 100 mph. A total of 380 Queen Bees served as target drones in the
Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy until they were retired in 1947.” See Larry Klein, "Spies That Fly."
98
The timeline for pachucos begins in 1940, which Rivera and Nevarez cite as the year the lowrider was invented.
See Angel Nevarez and Alex Rivera, "History," LowDrone, Accessed May 23, 2016,
http://www.lowdrone.com/background.html.
45

covered the history of unmanned aircraft in the first chapter, we will focus here on what Nevarez
and Rivera felt were landmarks in pachuco history. One of the most dramatic developments
occurs in 1959, when Lowriders were outlawed by then Governor of California, Pat Brown. “In
response,” assert Nevarez and Rivera, “pachucos add hydraulic pumps to their Lowriders,
allowing the car to raise or drop with a flip of a switch.”
99
Hollywood adopted the aesthetic of
the lowrider, presumably to achieve some degree of verisimilitude in depicting Mexican-
Americans in films in the 1970s and 1980s. Lowriders appeared in movies such as Steve
Martin’s The Jerk (1979), Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke (1978), and the music video for
Randy Newman’s I Love L.A. (1983). In the 1990s, the Lowrider, now strongly associated with
Angeleno urban culture, became “an icon of LA ‘gansgta rap.’”
100
Finally, in 2005, “the
world’s first aerial lowrider armed with video surveillance capabilities,” the Low Drone, is
created by artists Angel Nevarez and Alex Rivera. The timeline ends roughly here, though the
artists assert that as early as 2002, the Los Angeles Police Department was acquiring unmanned
aircraft to conduct surveillance on “pachucos and other urban residents.”
101

By 2014, the LAPD had in fact added the Draganflyer X6 unmanned aircraft to its
arsenal.
102
In the same year, half of the US/Mexico border was being patrolled by General
Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drones. Government sources report that this border surveillance began in
March of 2013,
103
but other sources state that drones have been used along the US-Mexico

99
Ibid.
100
Ibid.
101
Ibid.
102
Joel Rubin, "LAPD Adds Drones to Arsenal, Says They'll Be Used Sparingly,” Los Angeles Times, May 30,
2014, Accessed May 23, 2016, http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lapd-adds-drones-to-arsenal-
20140530-story.html.
103
Elliot Spagat and Brian Skoloff, "AP Exclusive: Drones Patrol Half of Mexico Border," The Associated Press,
November 13, 2014, Accessed May 23, 2016,
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8015402c7480430badfe47df502eaa19/ap-exclusive-drones-patrol-half-mexico-border
46

border since March of 2012.
104
This, of course, is only a complement to the already huge
presence of not only federal border agents, but also armed vigilantes. However, if border agents
have their way, border security will increasingly rely on more drone surveillance and fewer boots
on the ground; further increasing the emotional distance between Predator and prey.
105

The use of drones is a justification of fear of the Other. The process of launching and
transmitting information through a drone is inherently alienating. Its byproduct is
dehumanization, tantamount to the childhood wargame of pegs on a board, Battleship. The
operators are performing premeditated steps to accomplish a goal which reduces the opponent to
an anonymous, faceless subhuman
106
and changes combat into an amusing game of sport
killing. The operators’ activities are clandestine and not just sanctioned, but commanded by
people experiencing an even further mediated form of reality. The consecrated operator evades
onus and there is no risk involved, except for whatever guilt he or she might experience. But if
they accidentally kill a civilian or two, what real consequences do they face? As for the lives of
the people who occupy the areas in which the drones are attacking or surveilling, they suffer the
consequences of virtual colonization, and ethnic and cultural annihilation-- all manipulated by
soldiers sequestered in a dark room hundreds or thousands of miles away.
“For my part,” declared Michael Hayden in his New York Times op-ed, “the United
States needs not only to maintain this capacity, but also to be willing to use it. Radical Islamism
thrives in many corners of the world — Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Mali, the list

104
Ibid.
105
Julia Harte, "Exclusive: No Wall, but More High-tech Gear, Fencing Sought by U.S. Border Agents," Reuters,
April 28, 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-fence-exclusive-idUSKCN0XP28J.
106
Or, the wrong subhuman with one leg. As Michael Hayden describes, “In late 2006, for instance, a strike killed a
one-legged man we believed was a chieftain in the Haqqani network, a violent and highly effective group allied with
Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It turned out that the man was indeed affiliated with the Haqqanis, but he wasn’t the
leader we wanted. With all the land mines in the region, there were many one-legged terrorists in South Asia.” See
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/opinion/sunday/drone-warfare-precise-effective-imperfect.html?_r=0
47

goes on — where governments cannot or will not act. In some of these instances, the United
States must.”
107

What Bridle, Nevarez, Rivera, Bilal, Fast, Layton, and Bailey suggest is the radical idea
that we should be more involved with the wars being waged in our name. Their work corrects
the alienation by reducing the emotional distance between the viewer and the victims of these
wars. What they recognize is the drastic way in which this kind of aggression differs from what
came before. Once, battles between empires were pre-arranged, conducted at a certain time and
place, and executed face-to-face. However, as military technology has advanced, so has the
distance between foes. Now, a soldier need not even light the cannon pointed at his target.

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Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Asset Metadata

Creator Hamilton, Elizabeth Tierney (author)

Core Title Death from above: art contemplates drone warfare

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere

Publication Date 08/01/2016

Defense Date 07/27/2016

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Afghanistan,art,Bailey,Bilal,Brian,drones,Heather,Iraq,Layton,Middle East,OAI-PMH Harvest,Omer Fast,slaughter,Syria,The Intercept,Wafaa

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Jones, Amelia (committee chair), Tain, John (committee member), Wedell, Noura (committee member)

Creator Email e.tierney.hamilton@gmail.com,ethamilt@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-288392

Unique identifier UC11280667

Identifier etd-HamiltonEl-4690.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-288392 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-HamiltonEl-4690-2.pdf

Dmrecord 288392

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Hamilton, Elizabeth Tierney

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA