Critical Tactics Lab | Zach Blas: Facial Weaponization Suite and Face Cages

Thursday, December 11, 2014
7-9pm

This event will take place on the 2nd Floor of 20 Cooper Sq.
Livestream starts at 7 pm (EST). Click here to view the live video feed.

The success of today’s booming biometrics industry resides in its promise to rapidly measure an objective, truthful, and core identity from the surface of a human body, often for a mixture of commercial, state, and military interests. Yet, Biometric machines often fail to recognize non-normative, minoritarian persons, which makes such people vulnerable to discrimination, violence, and criminalization. Face Cages and Facial Weaponization Suite dramatize and protest against biometric facial recognition–and the inequalities these technologies propagate.

Wine Reception to follow.

Zach Blas is an artist, writer, and curator whose work engages technology, queerness, and politics. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University at Buffalo. Blas has exhibited and lectured internationally, most recently at Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; the 2014 Museum of Arts and Design Biennial, New York; the 2014 Dakar Biennial; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; and The Moving Museum, Istanbul. Zach has published writings in The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest; Women Studies Quarterly; and You are Here: Art after the Internet. His work has been written about and featured in Art Review, Frieze, Art Papers, Hyperallergic, Rhizome, Mousse Magazine, The Atlantic, and Al Jazeera America.

Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics
20 Cooper Square, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10003

This event is free and open to the public. A photo ID is required for entry to NYU buildings. This venue is wheelchair accessible.