Contesting post-digital futures: drone warfare and the geo-politics of aerial surveillance in the middle east

Abstract

The following conversation with artist Heba Y. Amin draws upon a series of projects that we have been working over an 18 month period, including our volume Heba Y Amin: The General's Stork (Sternberg Press, 2020) and her solo UK show, "When I see the future, I close my eyes", at the Mosaic Rooms (London), 1/10/20-28/03/21. Throughout the conversation, we focus on the research background to The General's Stork, alongside other works, and the threat presented by drone-based forms of aerial surveillance and targeting across the Middle East. In particular, we enquire into how the post-digital future of surveillance technologies will impact on the region and how, in turn, those regional politics of drone technology increasingly define the geopolitics of global aerial surveillance.

On naming drones: a European perspective

“…While political scientists and researchers in international relations are rethinking the future shape of war (Biermann and Wiegold 2015;Tawil-Souri 2016;Hippler 2019) or retracing political decision-making processes in this regard (Franke 2018), anthropological works have been reflecting on the complete transformation of the known world through the use of remotely controlled military drones for about five years (Gusterson 2016;Asad 2017;Parks and Kaplan 2017). Artists are reacting in a similarly rigorous way to the military use of robots, which theoretically affect us all globally in equal measure, but whose use has so far mainly been felt outside Europe and North America (Steyerl 2014, Amin 2016, Fast 2016, Osman 2017, El-Ariss 2019, Amin/ Downey 2020, Downey 2020, Stubblefield 2020. In addition, books and projects by anti-drone activists such as Medea Benjamin (2013, in Arabic 2014 or Emran Feroz (2017) have helped to popularise knowledge about the new arms race and the impact of drones on countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.…”

Witness statements and the technologies of memory: A conversation between Heba Y. Amin, Anthony Downey, Helene Kazan, Naeem Mohaiemen, and Susan Schuppli

“…Initially launched in 2020 by Amin and Downey at The Mosaic Rooms, London, “When I See the Future, I Close my Eyes, Chapter I” is an interdisciplinary collaborative platform that explores art- and exhibition-making as a methodology for new and ongoing research. Dedicated to broadening conversations around emerging forms of digital authoritarianism, the evolution of machine vision, and the technologies that support asymmetric warfare, the research platform reflects upon the colonial histories of technology and their role in maintaining models of extraction and Western regimes of visuality.…”