The 1,000 drones : a participatory memorial
- Submitting institution
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Abertay University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 17834866
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- -
- Month
- February
- Year
- 2014
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- DeLappe develops works that critically engage issues of memory, politics, history, physicality and community participation.
The 1,000 Drones was an installation commissioned for the exhibition “Making Now: Open for Exchange” for the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts (MOFA) in 2014, followed by an updated version created at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art (SVMA) in Sonoma, California, USA in 2017. The work takes a novel approach to memorialization and participatory art practice. Volunteers and visitors to the museum cut out small-scale, papercraft replicas of a General Atomics MQ-1 Predator drones. Upon each paper drone participants write the name of a civilian drone casualty. The names for the project are from known civilian casualties from Pakistan and Yemen as recorded by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The resulting drones are strung together to form a large-scale installation in the shape of a chevron that greeted visitors upon first entering the museum.
The project takes a critical and innovative approach to memorialization by adapting aspects of the tradition of Japanese “Senbazuru”, commonly referred to as “The 1,000 Cranes”. Since World War II this tradition has been associated with commemorating the atomic attacks upon Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Through the act of participating in this work of creative remembrance, the intention is to encourage Americans citizens to recognize and remember those innocents killed in the ongoing Global War on Terror.
The installation was well received in the two showings garnering several positive reviews in local and regional press. The project was featured in DeLappe’s essay “Memory and Resistance” published in the Radical History Review, Duke University Press (2019), and is to be featured in the upcoming book by Dr. Marita Sturken, entitled “Memory After Terrorism” (working title) to be published by the NYU Press (2021).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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