War/No War 2011-2015 investigates our nation’s armed conflicts in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa in which unmanned drones have come to replace combat troops as agents of war. Rather than presenting an argument for or against their use, my installation seeks to bring home events that are conducted and viewed as distant scenes. In addition to working with its content, I am using the pages of the New York Times as a source of raw material to be both digitally and physically manipulated, distilling the essential truth behind journalistic descriptions of events. The installation creates an environment through which a viewer can move and experience a notional theater of war. There is a tension between the simplicity of the cutouts and the convoluted scenarios they describe. This contradiction mirrors the disconnect between a virtual war environment experienced and controlled onscreen and the reality of these weapons as they are deployed a world away.
