THE EVIDENCE OF ABSENCE, 2015

The Evidence of Absence was a replica military surveillance blimp launched above a residential neighbourhood in London.

Currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, these helium-filled behemoths are being considered for use by forces in the U.K. and U.S. for border control.

The work's title refers to a remark by former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld concerning the search for Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction: “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

The Evidence of Absence, 2015.  Replica military surveillance blimp over London. 

“It should never be forgotten that while colonization, with its techniques and its political and juridical weapons, obviously transported Euro­pean models to other continents, it also had a considerable boomerang effect on the mechanisms of power in the West, and on the appara­tuses, institutions, and techniques of power. A whole series of colonial models was brought back to the West, and the result was that the West could practice something resembling colonization, or an internal colonialism, on itself.”

Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended