Surveillance Art
#Notabugsplat is a project unveiled by artists in Pakistan in 2014 as a response to civilians who died from the U.S drone strike. The project involved the reproduction of a young girl’s portrait on a large vinyl poster that was briefly displayed outside the city of Peshawar. The girl in print is unknown, and she is said to have lost her parents and two siblings. This artwork seeks to interpellate drone pilots who might see the girl’s face when flying their aircraft overhead. Artists intend to shame drone operators and make them realize the human cost of their actions. This interpellation produces several subject positions. Therefore, it is not incidental that the artists behind this project produced an over-exposed image of a young girl to stare back at pilots and represent the art project to the media and the world. First, the girl’s sex, age, and rustic dress connote someone in need of being saved from men’s violence and violation. Secondly, her face appears light-complexioned and luminous indicating purity, innocence, and vulnerability. #Notabugsplat, therefore, adds drone pilots, directly and western militaries and policymakers indirectly to the new category of violent men that girls like this one need saving from.
This artwork is a subversive way to use interpellation because it calls out the audience as responsible for ending drone violence through image viewing and sharing. Therefore, it is a safe form of political action in online spaces because image circulation and consumption are the basic workly avenues offered to the audience. Surveillance art has great potential power because artists produce a specific kind of subject through their framing mechanisms. While the artists claim that they have a specific audience targeted, the real one is the broader public exposed to media reports of the work primarily through mainstream media coverage and social media.