This article, published by M/C Journal (Vol. 23, No. 4), takes up the 2018 audio-visual installation work SANCTUM by artist-activist Zach Blas in conjunction with theoretical analysis of biometric full-body imaging scanners. These machines are increasingly being used to surveil and monitor individuals at border checkpoints, airports, and other securitised spaces.
The biometric scanners require bodies to ‘reveal’ themselves – to become transparent – yet they are pre-coded with limited notions of corporeality and normative ideas of gender and race that renders many bodies unreadable and potentially suspect. Taking an approach informed by critical security studies and queer theory, authors C.L. Quinan and Hannah Pezzack ask how the dynamic of mandatory complicity and revelation that body scanners warrant can be subverted. By analysing several scenes from SANCTUM, this article argues that Blas offers up an artistic intervention that queers the supposed objectivity and neutrality of biometric surveillance, thereby critically (re)materialising normative logics of revelation and readability. → Read
Videos: SANCTUM by Zach Blas (2018)
Commissioned by Julia Kaganskiy; Tentacular: Festival de Tecnologías, Críticas y Aventuras Digitales; and Matadero Madrid
Architecture, Design, and 3D Modeling: Scott Kepford
3D Modeling: ScannerWorksNY
Fabrication: Feltrero
3D Printing: Xometry
Computer Graphics: Harry Sanderson and Daniel Swan
Music: xin
Audio Mastering: Swan Meat
Research and Production Assistant: Dennis Dizon
Video Documentation Editor: Isabel Freeman