The geography of our geography: counter-mapping infrastructures of power

Abstract

This artistic work sets out to devise a set of critical and artistic strategies to sense the ways in which the sky is structured under a fusion of state and corporate power. By placing the military drone as a central actor, I argue the atmosphere is enveloped within a topography of enclosure, reconfigured in the service of military and corporate technologies. By using an artistic strategy of what I term counter-reconnaissance, a necessary inversion of the satellite’s gaze, we may conceive of, and value, the atmosphere as a material entity; a parallel sky that is vivid and tangible, political and aesthetic. Counter-reconnaissance utilizes the narrative terrain of Google Earth, where its open and accessible data can be used to help map the shadow states—and invisible rules—that structures and encloses space all around us. This method counter-maps global American military drone infrastructure and makes it palpable to the viewer, creating a constellation of violent geographies.