Facial Weaponization Communiqué: Fag Face

director: Zach Blas

original title: Facial Weaponization Communiqué: Fag Face

year: 2012

running time: 8 min.

synopsis

The personal features of the speaker, who reads a manifesto calling for the rejection of visibility, remain hidden behind an amorphous dark pink mask and an artificial voice. A montage of promotional and news spots about technologies capable of recognizing faces and storing biometric data accompanies this digital voice-over declaring disobedience. “The Queer Mask,” created from biometric data of the faces of many queer men, warns of the consequences of using these technologies as “gaydars”.

“In his Manifesto Contrasexual (2001), Paul Preciado advances the queer concept of ‘contrasexuality.’ Described as a refusal of sexual norms, contrasexuality prohibits any articulation of sexuality as naturalized. Indeed, speaking the word forces one to say ‘against sexuality’—that is, against an understanding of sexuality as constituted by dominating and hegemonic power… Contrasexuality is at once a refusal, and the constitution of an alternative.”

Quote source: e-flux.

biography

Zach Blas (born 1981) is an artist and writer, author of video installations, immersive environments, experimental films and essays. He is concerned with the materiality of digital technologies, the imagination hidden in artificial intelligence, and the subversive intervention in technologies of oppression, control, and surveillance. He has exhibited at Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery and ZKM in Karlsruhe, among others. He received his PhD from Duke University in Durham. He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto.

more about film

director:	Zach Blas
producer:	Zach Blas

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