Uneasy Listening

Susan Schuppli & Tom Tlalim, 2014-16 As US strategies around the War on Terror shifted from secret prisons and detention camps to targeted assassination under the Obama Administration in 2009, Predator and Reaper drones have come to saturate the airspace over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Northwest Pakistan. These armed drones troll the topographies of FATA in search of targets whose names are provided by the weekly Kill List compiled on infamous “Terror Tuesdays” at the White House. Their ubiquitous presence signaled by their acoustic emissions has become a permanent feature of the skies along the Afghan border. Reported casualties (fatalities and injuries) from drone strikes in Pakistan does not begin to represent the injurious nature of what it means to live under the constant sonic menace of drones.