Multimedia artist Katsu has been using drones to paint for a while now, and his latest project takes his act to the streets, using a drone to vandalize a Calvin Klein billboard in downtown Manhattan.
The six-story-high ad, located at the corner of Lafayette Street and East Houston, features 19-year-old model (and half-sister to the Kardashians) Kendall Jenner, whose face is now marred with several red lines spray-painted by the drone on Wednesday in a stunt recorded on video. Wired says it’s the first time a drone has been used in “a major act of public vandalism.”
Now targeting a global fashion brand and a reality TV personality, the artist has been known to take aim at high-profile figures: a show this winter at the Hole in New York depicted Mark Zuckerberg using his own feces (see Artist Paints Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Using Feces).
Drone technology is better known for being used in extrajudicial killings of suspected terrorists in the Middle East, which sanitize murder for those at the trigger but often result in civilian deaths. Closer to home, companies like Amazon aim to deliver books and khakis to your door—or even to the trunk of your car—with the remotely piloted craft.
Even if you’re not a fan of graffiti, maybe you can get behind vandalism as a way of defacing the most visible instances of capitalism’s intrusion into the visual landscape, especially when they traffic in unrealistic standards of beauty. A previous billboard at the same location featured a topless Justin Bieber that digitally enhanced both his muscles and his manhood.