Queer Technologies

QUEER TECHNOLOGIES (2007 – present)

Queer Technologies is an organization that produces critical applications, tools, and situations for queer technological agency, interventions, and social formation. By re-imaging a technology designed for queer use, Queer Technologies critiques the heteronormative, capitalist, militarized underpinnings of technological architectures, design, and functionality. Queer Technologies includes, transCoder, a queer programming anti-language; ENgenderingGenderChangers, a “solution” to Gender Adapters’ male/female binary; Gay Bombs, a technical manual manifesto that outlines a “how to” of queer networked activism; and GRID, a mapping application that tracks QT dissemination and infection.

Queer Technologies is currently developing a Facial Weaponization Suite in response to biometric facial technologies and emerging scientific studies that link rapid facial recognition techniques with determining sexual orientation. The suite includes a set of tools designed to resist these forms of recognition-control, such as Fag Face Masks, collective masks that enable users to wear the faces of many, and impossible expression masks.

Queer Technologies‘ products are often displayed and deployed at the Disingenuous Bar, an attack on Appleʼs Genius Bar that offers a heterotopic space for political support for “technical” problems. Queer Technologies also delivers live demonstrations and produces video tutorials.

QT products are also shop-dropped in various consumer electronics stores, such as Best Buy, Radio Shack, and Target. QT items are produced as product, artwork, and political tool and materialized through an industrial manufacturing process so that they may be disseminated widely.

Queer Technologies has been exhibited in numerous venues around the world, including The Foundation for Art and Creative Technology in Liverpool, England; File Electronic Language International Festival in Sao Paolo, Brazil; the OpenSource Festival in Düsseldorf, Germany; and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.

Queer Technologies was awarded a 2010 Prixxx Arse Elektronika Golden Kleene and the 2010 Gallery Choice Award for The Kenan Institute for Ethics’ annual exhibition at the Fredric Jameson Gallery. Queer Technologies has also been interviewed by rhizome.org.

www.queertechnologies.info