Joan Pallé

Exploded Views, showcases the outcomes of the artist’s research on the Eurodrone: a joint project involving the governments of Spain, Italy, France, and Germany. This collaborative effort aims to develop the first heavily weaponized unmanned combat aircraft produced in Europe.

The Eurodrone is taken here as a starting point to make an anti-war statement through art, but also a meeting point for a series of diverse issues related to technological advances, collective identity, and the current historical moment.

The European Medium Altitude Long Endurance Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (MALE RPAS) or Eurodrone refers to the project of developing an unmanned military aircraft. This project is carried out jointly by the governments of Spain, Italy, Germany and France. Initiated in 2015, the Eurodrone expects its first deliveries in 2027. It is planned that the craft’s airframe is set to be constructed in Spain, particularly at Airbus plants in the Bay of Cadiz, with Dassault in France providing technological systems, Leonardo in Italy producing the wings, and a German Airbus plant handling final assembly.

Beyond its technological aspects, the Eurodrone serves as a focal point for addressing ethical concerns related to drone use in armed conflicts. Issues explored include the role of these weapons in the fourth industrial revolution, the application of artificial intelligence, the construction of European identity, and the ethical values of the European Union and its geopolitical strategies.To treat these issues Joan Pallé makes a series of two-dimensional works, small and large formats, in which codes of graphic design and scientific illustration are mixed. Although visual resources such as cutaway illustration and exploded views are used to construct the images, the artworks avoid the typical functional character associated with such images. Instead, they replace aseptic texts with a compilation of quotes, references and reflections on the political and moral implications of the military industry, as well as issues related to European policies and the fourth industrial revolution.

In this way, Exploded Views contemplates the intersection of economic interests in the discourse of the European Union and how far this coalition is willing to go to promote the industrial and technological development of its member countries. Additionally, the use of drones in armed conflicts is an angle from which to approach questions related to the fourth industrial revolution: the current stage in which industrial development is characterized by the use of advanced robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing and autonomous vehicles.

On the other hand, this project includes an appreciation of the male fetishization of the war arsenal. Including studies that analyze how some violent men take firearms as a fetish, it alludes to a possible extrapolation of this attitude on a larger scale when it comes to long-range weaponry in men in high political positions.

In this way, the Eurodrone functions as a symbolic platform to convey certain critical discourses that overflow and surpass it. Activating a response from the art world to the war scenario in Europe and the Middle East, this exhibition displays an anti-war, conscious and informed discourse that transcends the artistic to offer a nuanced perspective on Western society today.