When the news dropped in December that Iran had discovered a downed model RQ 170 drone that had been sent by the United States for stealth espionage, the fear was that the country would somehow duplicate the drone’s technology and turn it against the US. Well, what they’re actually doing with the unmanned “Beast of Kandahar,” as it was nicknamed, is turning the weapon into a conceptual art project.

Iranian state radio has reported that the government will create “70,000 copies” of the drone in a miniature scale to be sold to Iranians for $4 a piece. Essentially, they’re turning the machine of war into an editioned run of collectible toys, a friendly symbolic reminder of this triumph of Iran over the West. Iran will also send a single scaled-down model drone back to the US government, in response to Barack Obama’s demand that the country return the drone. Political sarcasm?

Not unlike Chris Burden or Paul McCarthy’s warped appropriations of childhood toys as art-making materials, the Iranian mini-drone uses a normal form (the trophy, the action figure) to signify something very expansive and strange — the military power of one nation over another. The gesture also has something in common with artist Charles Ray, who toys with scale in his sculpture. [SUAS News]

— Kyle Chayka

Tags: Politics