Shown at A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam.

Thanks to Volkskracht for providing the project support.

This work explores the psychological and ethical impact of drone warfare. Composed of first-person footage from the war in Ukraine and Russia, the video is projected on a hologram fan. Each clip halts before impact, breaking into a glitch. This deliberate refusal to show destruction interrogates how war imagery circulates online consumed as spectacle while the trauma it produces remains unseen.

The soundscape of the fan intensifies the sense of pursuit and menace. Soldiers and civilians alike describe developing “drone-phobia,” where the natural buzzing of bees or flies becomes unbearable, forever associated with the threat of attack. This transformation of the natural into the technological demonstrates how war colonizes perception itself.

The loop resists catharsis, embodying the endless hovering presence of drones and the psychological toll of anticipation. The glitch becomes an ethical interruption: a refusal of spectacle that instead opens space for reflection on the weaponization of media and the haunting persistence of violence withheld.

The work responds to the growing gamification of war. The Ukrainian military is reportedly testing a point-based system in which drone operators submit video evidence of strikes to earn rewards redeemable for better munitions and equipment. Violence thus becomes tactical, transactional, and incentivized. By reframing footage critically stripped of propaganda, interrupted rather than glorified the work resists such normalization.