Zach Blas

Artist, filmmaker and writer Zach Blas engages with technologies of surveillance and control through the lens of queer and feminist politics. Primarily working in film and video, Blas creates works that explore the alternatives to dominating structures, be it the Internet transforming into a tool for totalitarian oppression (Contra-Internet, 2015-2019) or the gendered politics of face recognition technologies (im here to learn so :)))))), 2017). Combining the dystopia of contemporary forms of control, hiding in devices of artificial intelligence, biological warfare or airport security, with queer and feminist theory, Blas considers the notion of the outside, of all that which does not comply with the established, Western normativity. It is through the idea of the outside that he uses his artistic practice to find the alternatives or, in the artist’s words, “the horizon of possibility”. For Blas, his artistic practice - comprising immersive, psychedelic films, performative lectures and academic writing - is an open space for queer utopia.