Robotic Tears

War goes on in the Middle ease.Created over an original nineteenth-century engraving from The Illustrated London News documenting the Second Anglo-Afghan War, this work confronts the cyclical nature of conflict in the Middle East and Central Asia. The historic image — once printed as imperial reportage for Victorian audiences — depicts the movement of military supplies and caravans during Britain’s campaign in Afghanistan. Onto this archival surface, contemporary imagery has been drawn by polargraph and physically collaged into the paper itself. Ghostlike forms, scorched marks, and fragmented silhouettes interrupt the calm authority of the original engraving, collapsing past and present into a single visual field. The work suggests that the machinery of war has changed far less than its technologies. Caravans become convoys; imperial campaigns become modern occupations; history repeats itself beneath different flags and different headlines. By intervening directly onto the antique print, the piece transforms a historical document into an active site of memory, trauma, and recurrence. The tension between the mechanical precision of the polargraph and the fragile nineteenth-century paper reflects the collision between old empires and contemporary systems of warfare. What remains constant is the human cost — displacement, survival, and the endless movement of people through conflict.