Since the 2000s, there has been a rapid evolution in the production and use of war images, driven by technological change. During the wars in Afghanistan, in the Sahelian region or in Syria Drones, a steady flow of images that inform the operations of the wars started to be feed by satellites, military drones or action cam cameras mounted on tanks, helmets or bodies of the fighters. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is part of this evolution, as it generates an unprecedented flow of online images from civilian-made surveillance drones, sometimes transformed into bombing tools, from personal action cam type cameras mounted on soldiers' helmets, and from FPV game drones transformed into loitering munitions. The war in Ukraine has completely overturned both the way in which images of war are produced and their circulation through successive remediations on social media, encrypted messaging services such as Telegram, cable Tv Network or forums. Now produced and published on social networks by the belligerents, by the civilian populations themselves or hijacked by the opposing camp as part of a counter-propaganda strategy, these images are increasingly ‘out of control’. The media space they create “deepened” the process of 'media warfare' (Hepp, 2019) and forms a battlefield with new rules and functions that are constantly evolving, constantly growing and increasingly instantaneous. The evolution of this media space, which constitutes a vast battlefield, will be one of the focal points of this workshop.

The systematic use of civilian drones transformed into tactical surveillance tools and/or flying platforms for dropping mini-bombs has greatly altered the nature of battle footage, making it possible to produce images of trench fighting or artillery battles. An aesthetic porosity between both FPS/FPV video games and operational images filmed by action cams placed on the helmets of the belligerents (Zuchuat 2025). The result is that we increasingly see war through the “cross-hairs” (Stahl 2018). The fundamental changes in the nature of images of war coming from the Ukrainian front will constitute a second major analytical concern.

Most of these images are ‘operational images’ in the sense introduced by Farocki (2004) as they are part of the war operations. They are designed « neither to inform nor to entertain », but they are « part of an operation ».The images from the war in Ukraine that are being mass-remediated on the social networks belong to these two categories of images, sometimes intertwined in the same film depicting a battle or an assault. They circulate then within a dynamic that follows Hito Steyerl's (2013) notion of circulationism, which suggests that circulation is 'not just about making an image, but about post-producing, launching and accelerating it'.

• How do operational images and images of operations from the war in Ukraine are produced and then circulate? What aesthetics are developed during this process?
• What are the political implications of this?
• How are these articulated in the post-soviet space?

These questions form the basis of the 3 analytical axes that will structure this international workshop.

Program and Live streaming: https://frontlineimages.sciencesconf.org