This March, Ibraaz launched its public programme in partnership with Art Dubai. Dubbed Ibraaz Talks, this is a series of specially curated conversations with artists, curators and writers at Art Dubai. Each participant was invited to respond to a particular issue or keyword that they felt in some way addressed formal and conceptual issues affecting contemporary visual culture. In this discussion between Omar Kholeif and Guy Mannes-Abott, the impact of drone warfare is explored through the imagining of a drone as a subjective being capable of feeling the world, as explored in the writing of Mannes-Abott.

Guy Mannes-Abbott is a writer, essayist and critic who lives and works in London. He is the author of a singular series of texts - poems, stories, aphorisms - called e.things, which have been exhibited, published and performed alongside the work of leading British artists as well as sporing artists' videos, since 1997. In Ramallah, Running is the longest and latest in this series of texts and projects. Mannes-Abbott collaborated with Bombay-based collective CAMP on a film called The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories for the Folkestone Triennial 2011, as well as, for example, written catalogue essays on visual art. He has been a tutor in architectural theory at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, and is published in specialist journals. Critical journalism spanning literature and visual art has appeared in the New Statesman, The Guardian, Harpers & Queen, Bidoun and The Independent. Recent publications include; Translated By (Ed. Arsène-Henry and Basar), and an Introduction to Mourid Barghouti's Midnight and Other Poems. A novel that takes place between the Arabian and Baltic Seas is forthcoming.