Fashion Police Drones transforms drones into arbiters of fashion. They patrol the gallery, scan what people are wearing and announce the verdict out loud. Uncovered hair is a hijab violation, an exposed belly button is indecent exposure, a Zara label is an environmental crime, socks with sandals are socks with sandals. The charges run from the light-hearted to the culturally contentious.
Being scanned and sentenced in front of a room is the point. Attendees feel the surveillance and the public judgment instead of reading about it. The charges are borrowed rather than invented. The hijab check works like the dress codes Iran’s morality police enforce, and the indecency check is the same nudity detection that content moderation already runs on our photos. It is a joke about fashion, built with the tools used for real discrimination and real surveillance.
The list of crimes changes with each exhibition. So far there have been three sets:
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Corporate fashion crimes, targeting fast fashion giants like Zara, H&M and Shein for their environmental and labour abuses. A visible logo or a polyester blend is enough for a conviction, and the brand is sentenced rather than the person wearing it.
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Ahnjili’s crimes, my own pet peeves enforced with unapologetic flair. Socks with sandals is the standing offence, and the rest are just as arbitrary.
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Country-specific crimes, where the drones emulate government-enforced dress codes: uncovered hair, a face veil under a burqa ban, cross-dressing where it is criminalised, an exposed belly button under public indecency rules. Here dress is a tool of political control.
Previous exhibitions and press
On May 31st 2024, I was invited by the Privacy Salon to present at the CPDP conference in Brussels.
On June 29th 2024, I presented the Fashion Police Drones at the New Media Art Conference (2024) at the CICA Museum in Korea.
The work was also showcased at AIAIAI.art, and in May 2024 I was interviewed by dublab about the project: Artificial Nouveau: Fashion Police Drones.
Postscript
After exhibiting this work for the first time, I came across a BBC report that Iran had deployed real drones to enforce its hijab law on the streets. The piece was made as satire and critique of how surveillance technology amplifies the enforcement of fashion and dress codes. Reading that report made the satire feel very thin. BBC: Iran using drones to enforce hijab law, says rights group (2024)
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