Drones and Night Vision: Militarised Technology in Paintings by George Gittoes and Jon Cattapan

Abstract

This thesis focusses on the representation of militarised airborne drones and night vision technologies in paintings by Australian contemporary artists, George Gittoes and Jon Cattapan. Drawing on substantial primary research, including extensive interviews with both artists, the argument is developed through a cross-disciplinary framework that incorporates discourse from art history, critical theory, cultural studies, and political theory. Particular attention is paid to debates surrounding increasingly autonomous, persistent surveillance, and rapid response targeting capabilities associated with airborne drones and night vision technology. Gittoes and Cattapan have both lived or worked in war and conflict zones; Gittoes in numerous zones since 1986 when he went to Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution (1979-1990), and Cattapan in Timor Leste in 2008 as Australia’s 63rd official War Artist. Both artists have used night vision technology in conflict zones, and Gittoes has witnessed the deployment of airborne drones. Despite their conceptual and political affinities, their works have not previously been analysed together, and no detailed studies of their engagement with contemporary militarised technology have been undertaken. This thesis not only offers a significant addition to art historical understandings of the artists’ works, but also presents novel insights into the capacity of contemporary painting to critically engage with ethical and political issues associated with developments in militarised technology. The structure of the thesis is in two parts. Chapter One, “George Gittoes: Scoping the Horror of War”, draws on Paul Virilio’s critiques of screen-based technology to examine how Gittoes’ paintings trigger questions about militarised drone vision. It contests the use of words such as seeing and vision when applied to contemporary militarised technology, offering Gittoes’ paintings as evidence that scope and scoping more aptly describe drone surveillance and targeting capabilities. In Chapter Two, “Jon Cattapan: Ghosts and Data Proxies, Disappearance and Reappearance”, Jean Baudrillard’s speculative writings on war and cyber technology are applied to Cattapan’s enigmatic paintings where dripped paint is overlaid with digital-like spectral markings. This chapter proposes that Cattapan’s paintings provide evidence of human disappearance through data proxy digital replacements, exposing the cyber-world as both battlefield and weapon. Throughout the thesis, theoretical critique is consistently paired with detailed and close visual analyses of key paintings by the artists. In bringing together the works of Cattapan and Gittoes through the lens of militarised technology, this thesis generates new understandings of the ways in which contemporary painting can critically engage with issues associated with developments in contemporary warfare. It argues that the paintings and artistic practices of Gittoes and Cattapan expose particular kinds of dehumanising processes propagated by the deployment of remotely piloted militarised drones and night vision technologies. The argument critiques the way developments in drone systems inform “future of war” rhetoric that emanates from military sources and manufacturers of militarised technology. It demonstrates that the artists’ paintings and practices prompt important questions that address current as well as future implications of militarised technology. In an age dominated by cyber and digital technology the artists’ paintings, created with hands-on analogue processes, provide evidence of contemporary painting’s political and radically subversive agency.