2021/07/04: EssayPerformative Research and Techno-Aesthetics, in Heba Y Amin: The General’s Stork (Sternberg, 2020)

“What are those?” asked the camera operator.
“Women and children,” the Predator’s mission intelligence coordinator answered.
“That lady is carrying a kid, huh? Maybe,” the pilot said.
“The baby, I think, on the right. Yeah,” the intelligence coordinator said.
—Transcript of a Predator drone strike in Uruzgan province, Afghanistan, February 21, 2010

Technology is far ahead of humanity and ethics.
—Jonas Mekas

In September 2013, Egyptian authorities detained a migratory stork that had arrived in Egypt after traveling from Hungary via, among other countries, Israel. Reportedly captured by a fisherman who viewed the bird with suspicion after noticing an electronic device attached to it, the unfortunate stork was handed over to the local police station in Qena (a city situated on the east bank of the Nile in Upper Egypt).

Read Essay for Heba Y Amin: The General’s Stork (Sternberg, 2020), here