The Spectacular Drone: Contesting Pandemic Lockdowns from Above and Below

Abstract During the COVID-19 pandemic, drone videos of cities under lockdown were shared widely on global news and social media, drawing attention to the drone as an emergent technology of perception, witnessing, and artistic expression. Diverging from the majority of drone scholarship, which centers on its practical utility for warfare, surveillance, policing, and activism, this essay is interested in the drone as an aesthetic medium. Through the notion of the “spectacular drone,” I highlight the technology's ability to produce kinetic and affective spectacles. I argue that there is a need to explore, rather than foreclose, the drone's aesthetic potential through diverse articulations in pandemic drone media. The essay examines three attempts to evoke the spectacular drone in the documentation of lockdowns: a feature-length documentary directed by the renowned artist Ai Weiwei, Coronation, and two online videos that went viral in China—one during the initial Wuhan lockdown in 2020 and the other during the Shanghai lockdown in 2022. All three works try to incorporate drone spectacularity with varying degrees of success. By either critiquing the typical “drone's eye view” as distant and statist or failing at achieving “perfect” drone footage, these works affirm the street-level perspectives of ordinary citizens.