The Antidrone

Bint Mbareh

During the Israeli genocide of Gaza, unmanned aerial vehicles are mounted with weapons which kill directly, or they are used for constant surveillance. They have been witnessed to have addressed people, ordering them to leave wherever they are. They have also been heard playing the sounds of distressed babies and screaming women to lead people to the site of a recent bombing, only then to open fire at them. There are almost certainly uses for drones that are still unknown.

But the way that the drone—its sound and footage—is consumed by the Palestinians is as if it is an omnipresent force of the occupation. It lends the soldier a distance from whatever the soldier wants to know or to kill, while constantly inching closer and becoming more inescapable to the Palestinian subject. Drone footage argues for its own authority; and the Zannaneh (whiner) is there to remind Palestinians of the fact that they are constantly surveilled by something that they cannot know.

I made this piece to defend Palestinian unknowability. It begins with the sound of a woman articulating unclearly the names of the martyred in Gaza, with an Israeli drone overhead. It ends with the sound of a man articulating unclearly the names of his martyred friends. Every other sound in the piece is of a choir droning, making fun of the Zannaneh. I posit the choir as an opposite to the drone: it listens and sounds horizontally. It anonymises whoever is in it, adding one’s voice to the complicity of the many. When we choir, we rely on the breathing of others both to hear and to sound. Our work is to listen carefully and echo others to support their breathing and breathe when they run out of breath—this aliveness and listening relationally is the opposite of the authority that the drone imposes.

Bint Mbareh, The Antidrone (29 May 2025). Download as mp3.