Telepresence Operator:
An Analysis of a Drone Pilot

Installation
2017

Video. Reconstructed Book From a Flight Checklist. Approach Maps

"Whether it matters if the person who pulls the trigger is thousands of miles away or in an aircraft directly overhead is widely debated: is killing people using drones easier or harder, more intimate or more abstract, less or more ethical?"

― Ann Rogers & John Hill, "Unmanned: Drone Warfare and Global Security"

Telepresence Operator, produced for the "bkz. darağaç" exhibition in 2017, deals with the trauma created by remote action and not being touched in the age of interface. The interview videos of the operators using drones, a book reconstructed from flight checklists and flight planning maps were designed site-specific and exhibited in a car paint workshop in Darağaç.

The reality of the screen and the time of the current battle arena superimpose different surfaces. So it causes "uncanny confusion" by the ontological indeterminacy of the screen. (Kris Paulsen) Telepresence Operator describes this confusion polyphonically.

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The reality of the screen and the time of the current battle arena superimpose different surfaces. So it causes "uncanny confusion" by the ontological indeterminacy of the screen. (Kris Paulsen) Telepresence Operator describes this confusion polyphonically.

© BURAK DİKİLİTAŞ — 2023