In this talk, artist Zach Blas will discuss his recent artwork and writing that contribute toward a theory of “informatic opacity,” which he defines as aesthetico-political practices that resist emerging modes of digital capture, such as biometric recognition technologies, and insist on an embodied dimension of the life that cannot be fully abstracted by technical processes of calculation and visualization. Blas will explore this through an engagement with Eduoard Glissant’s writings on opacity and his critique of transparency, as well as Blas’ art projects Facial Weaponization Suite, which consists of creating ‘collective masks’ for public intervention, and Face Cages, a dystopian installation that considers the abstract violence of biometric control.
Bio:
Zach Blas is an artist and writer whose work engages technology, queerness, and politics. Currently, he is a Lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a resident at the Delfina Foundation. Blas has exhibited and lectured internationally, most recently at ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; e-flux, New York; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; New Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw; the 2014 Dakar Bienniale; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; and transmediale, Berlin. Blas is producing two books: Escaping the Face, an artist monograph of recent works to be published by Rhizome at the New Museum and Sternberg Press in 2016, and Informatic Opacity: The Art of Defacement in Biometric Times, a theoretical study of biometric facial recognition and refusals of recognition. Blas holds a PhD from the Graduate Program in Literature at Duke University and a MFA in Design Media Arts from UCLA.
www.zachblas.info