Video work ¿Me ves?, 2026
6:23
Drawing on Peter Sloterdijk’s concept of air terror, the video work examines the myth of the innocence of distance: the idea that the absence of direct contact with a victim turns an act of violence into a technical operation stripped of personal responsibility. During the aerial bombardments of the Spanish Civil War, pilots of the Aviazione Legionaria could not see the faces of those they were killing. Instead of human bodies, they saw maps, coordinates, and designated targets. This was partly due to a document dated August 20, 1936, where Manuel Villegas, Franco's envoy to Mussolini, authorizes strikes against "objects whose destruction may have moral or material consequences. Italian and German aircraft consequently terrorised the Spanish population, eventually reaching Guernica. Tommaso Marinetti and Gabriele D’Annunzio romanticised aerial warfare, dedicating poems to soldiers. While aboard an aircraft, Marinetti famously called out to the troops below: “Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge!”
The same principle persists in contemporary armed conflicts, with one important difference: instead of a pilot, the attack is carried out remotely by an operator controlling an FPV drone, often as though they were playing a computer game.
6:23
Drawing on Peter Sloterdijk’s concept of air terror, the video work examines the myth of the innocence of distance: the idea that the absence of direct contact with a victim turns an act of violence into a technical operation stripped of personal responsibility. During the aerial bombardments of the Spanish Civil War, pilots of the Aviazione Legionaria could not see the faces of those they were killing. Instead of human bodies, they saw maps, coordinates, and designated targets. This was partly due to a document dated August 20, 1936, where Manuel Villegas, Franco's envoy to Mussolini, authorizes strikes against "objects whose destruction may have moral or material consequences. Italian and German aircraft consequently terrorised the Spanish population, eventually reaching Guernica. Tommaso Marinetti and Gabriele D’Annunzio romanticised aerial warfare, dedicating poems to soldiers. While aboard an aircraft, Marinetti famously called out to the troops below: “Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge!”
The same principle persists in contemporary armed conflicts, with one important difference: instead of a pilot, the attack is carried out remotely by an operator controlling an FPV drone, often as though they were playing a computer game.