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’)

• COOL FOR YOU - SHE WHOSE BLOOD IS CLOTTING IN MY UNDERWEAR - Vika Kirchenbauer (2016, 3’)

• The Future Ahead - Improvements for the further masculinisation of prepubescent boys - Amalia Ulman (2015, 16’)

• 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.

SYNOPSIS

Irineu

Unable to forget and doted of an infallible memory.

American Reflexxx

American Reflexxx is a short film documenting a social experiment that took place in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The result is a heart wrenching technicolor spectacle that raises questions about gender perception, mob mentality, and violence in America.

Facial Weaponization Communiqué: Fag Face

Facial Weaponization Suite protests against biometric facial recognition–and the inequalities these technologies propagate–by making “collective masks” in workshops that are modeled from the aggregated facial data of participants, resulting in amorphous masks that cannot be detected as human faces by biometric facial recognition technologies.

The Future Ahead - Improvements for the further masculinisation of prepubescent boys

Artist Amalia Ulman studies issues concerning gender identity in a work based on the online commotion surrounding Justin Bieber’s supposed gender transition. A fascinating study about the internet’s influence on the perception of maleness in contemporary society.

SHE WHOSE BLOOD IS CLOTTING IN MY UNDERWEAR

A video for Kirchenbauer’s music/performance project COOL FOR YOU. Following her research on enhanced vision via infrared technology in modern warfare, here she utilises these technological means to discuss intimacy, the body and the privileged gaze of the spectator.

Bradley Manning had Secrets

The story of Chelsea Manning (formerly known as Bradley), not as a Wikileaks 'hacktivist', but as a young American soldier simultaneously going through a crisis-of-conscience and a crisis-of-gender-identity.

Drone Boning

Considered by the press as the world's first aerial pornography film, Drone Boning by Ghost + Cow can be seen as satirical social commentary on the increasing drone-surveillance and how it invades our bodies and intimacy.