Dronism (A drone peregrination in Egypt), 2013
Photographs, quadcopter, instructions
Poster with instructions for protect yourself from drones in White desert, Egypt. Courtesy of the artist
In 2013, Spanish artist and activist Lot Amoros visited the deserts of Egypt as a part of his research around Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). He placed posters around the territory to inform people how to protect themselves from the Hebron drones of Israel. The posters showed Arabic instructions directly quoted from real Al-Qaida drone documents. All al-Qaida references or offensives were removed and replaced with peaceful instructions for the sole purpose of offering innocent civilians a series of tools to protect themselves from unmanned aerial vehicles with common materials and trash: old cars, damaged home appliances, etc., which can be used to construct devices such as frequency inhibitors, blinding of cameras and so on. Using the rhetoric of religion, the posters in some way imitated the ten commandments of Moses, placing the drone in a godlike position - omnipresent and all powerful.
In A screaming comes across the sky, the posters are displayed along with pictures taken in the desert. Amoros presents the tiny DIY drone -mini quadcopter that was his travel companion. He intended to fly the quadcopter over the border into Palestinian territory with tiny instructions but it was too dangerous. However, he later succeeded by sending the instructions via underground tunnels. During this expedition, Amorós was engaged in gathering mythologies and narratives of people who live under the threat of drones to hypothesise the idea of a drone religion.
Courtesy: Lot Amorós
