Contesting Post-digital Futures: Drone Warfare and the Geo-politics of Aerial Surveillance in the Middle East

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 increas- ingly define the geopolitics of global aerial surveillance.