As an artist, Mr.Bridle is interested in the relationship between the digital and physical world, in how the former changes the way we think about the latter. “Drones are one of those technologies that seemed to go from science fiction to completely mundane without going through a critical-thinking stage,” he said. “It seemed to stand for so much: war, crime, violence and technology.” He has since realized versions of the work, called “Drone Shadow,” in locations from Washington to Istanbul.
The latest version of “Drone Shadow” falls across the atrium of the Imperial War Museum London as the first work in the exhibition “Age of Terror: Art Since 9/11.” Curated by Sanna Moore, the show explores how artists have responded to conflict since those calamitous events. Taking the attack on the World Trade Center as a cultural turning point, the exhibition “reflects on the continuing state of emergency we’ve been in and how the world has changed: mass surveillance, civil rights, detentions without trial,” Ms. Moore said.
The scale of “Age of Terror” — the largest contemporary art exhibition ever staged by the Imperial War Museum — reflects the increase in the number of artists responding to conflict in recent years, Ms. Moore said.
The show opens with works that respond directly to Sept. 11 before moving on to consider how the attacks have permeated daily life, in the United States and beyond. Some began in the immediate aftermath: Tony Oursler started filming the footage used in his work “9/11” in Lower Manhattan soon after the second plane hit. The piece “9/12 Front Page” by the German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann assembles 151 newspaper covers from around the world from the following day, many carrying the same photograph.
How my heart sings 