Piyatat Hemmatat: Ballistics
Overview
Historically, the survival of an individual, tribe, region or country has largely depended on its progress in the arms race; the ability to hunt, protect, attack, defend, disarm, thrive and evolve. A strong military arsenal or personal weapons can be both an intimidating threat or a peacetime deterrent.
The global military industrial complex is at the forefront of cutting-edge technology and engineering. It constantly pushes the technological boundaries and is the biggest business enterprise in the world. Aside from arms and military capability, it has given the world other kinds of technological breakthroughs: double-edged swords such as digital communications and smart production platforms, including the internet, mobile phones, GPS, robotics, space programmes and AI.
The very idea of weapons is understandably a polarising subject. Its nature is extreme with contradictory design elements of beauty and ugliness. Firearms specifically have their own distinctive aesthetics and represent the dualities of creation and destruction, the mechanical and organic, terror and inspiration, light and dark. Technology truly expresses and brings out the best and the worst within all of us.
Guns are weapons used with hands and arms as an extension of the human form. Fundamentally analogue tools, they have evolved from archery, swords and spears. The entire project of Ballistics consists of a series of photographs, sculptures, and video installations created using different calibre guns and bullets.
