Part of our Queer Futures public programme and exhibition exploring narratives for queer resistance, from mythology and folklore to speculative science fiction, we invite Pedro Marum, curator and artist based in Berlin, to present XENOMETRICS, a film program analysing the impact of digital surveillance and capture on non-normative bodies, sexual desires, and practices.
The screening will be followed by a conversation with Pedro Marum and the artist and scholar, Zach Blas.
Curated by Pedro Marum
In collaboration with Lou Drago & XenoEntities Network
Image courtesy Vika Kirchenbauer
PROGRAM:
O Retrato de Irineu - João Leitão (2014, 4’)
American Reflexxx - Signe Pierce and Alli Coates (2013, 14’)
Facial Weaponization Communiqué: Fag Face - Zach Blas (2012, 8’)
SHE WHOSE BLOOD IS CLOTTING IN MY UNDERWEAR - Vika Kirchenbauer (2016, 3’)
Bradley Manning had secrets - Adam Butcher (2011, 5’)
Drone Boning - Ghost + Cow (2014, 3’)
In an era of increasing digital-surveillance and info-militarism, we realise that the targets of their oppressive gaze (defined by Lacan as the state of unease and anxiety provoked by the feeling that one might be under observation) are not only state-proclaimed criminals but all citizens, all potential deviants to the state order and with taxes to pay.
From CCTV, drones, border checks, police raids, the immense dragnet surveillance extends to even more intimate mechanisms, collecting data and metadata from personal emails, social media and clouds. With the latest technologies of biometric surveillance and dataveillance, our physical and virtual bodies have become rich pools for data mining.
Yet, under the mechanic scrutiny, surveillance has a normative effect on how bodies should look in order to distinguish the “citizen” from the “terrorist”, the “normal” from the “deviant”, an algorithmic supremacy that perpetuates ableism, classism, homophobia, sexism, racism, and transphobia.
If on one hand visibility has been used by minorities as a political tool to gain recognition, invisibility and privacy became vital for those with nonconforming identities. As concealment becomes forbidden within the neoliberal order, obligating bodies to be citizens and to assume a position of availability to be profiled and identified, marginalised minorities – such as gender non-conforming and trans* people – see their identities exposed to biometric scrutiny under the excuse of being threats, terrorists or deviants to the civil order.
Pedro Marum (Portugal) is a curator, artist and scholar based in Berlin. He has worked as a curator for Queer Lisboa film festival and served as jury, lecturer and guest for several film festivals abroad (Rotterdam, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Hamburg, Vienna). He is the co-curator of Queer Focus, an academic approach to film focusing on transgression lines, social geographies and on the relation between bodies and space. In early 2011 he founded the artistic platform Rabbit Hole and works as a curator, video artist and performer. http://pedromarum.com
