Join Heba Y. Amin and Anthony Downey for the online launch of their new book The General’s Stork (Sternberg Press, 2020), about Amin’s project which is now on display as part of her new exhibition now on at at The Mosaic Rooms.

In 2013, Egyptian authorities detained a migratory stork, accusing it of espionage. This incident, that seems initially amusing, became the impetus for Heba Y. Amin’s The General’s Stork, an ongoing project that investigates the all-too-deadly politics of aerial surveillance in the Middle East. The General of the title is Allenby (pictured), once governor of Egypt and instrumental in the British occupation of Palestine, shown with his pet stork, among other works on show.

Amin and Downey give insights into the project, and the book. They discuss how land surveying, bombing, drone technologies and other forms of technology have transformed Western power in the Middle East into a spectacle of high-tech weaponry. 

About the book

With contributions from Adam Harvey, Adel Iskandar, Haitham Mossad, and Laura Poitras, Heba Y. Amin: The General’s Stork is volume 02 in the Research/Practice series (ed. Downey, Sternberg Press, 2019-ongoing). The series asks: In their speculative and yet purposeful approach to research, what forms of innovative knowledge do artists produce? 

Heba Y. Amin is a multi-media artist from Egypt. She works with political themes and archival history, using mediums including film, photography, archival material, lecture performance and installation. Amin teaches at Bard College Berlin, is a doctorate fellow in art history at Freie Universität, and a current Field of Vision fellow in New York. She is the co-founder of the Black Athena Collective, curator of visual art for the MIZNA journal, and co-curator for the biennial residency program DEFAULT with Ramdom Association.

Anthony Downey is Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa (Birmingham City University). He is currently a Co-investigator on AHRC and GCRF–funded research projects that focus on cultural practices, education, and digital methodologies in Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. He sits on the editorial boards of Third Text and Digital War, respectively, and is the series editor for Research/Practice (Sternberg Press, 2019–ongoing).