Page contents
Areas of Focus
A white person with a black and yellow head scarf, blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick with a white square framing their face with red facial recognition dots.A white person with a black and yellow head scarf, blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick with a white square framing their face with red facial recognition dots.
With Harris Kornstein
FeedOral History
Edited: May 16, 2023
Pronouns
Any pronouns
Date and place of birth
b. 1984, New York
Current location
Tucson, Arizona
Year(s) of residency and/or fellowship
2020, Rapid Response Fellow

How do you characterize the media you work in?

I work in digital media and performance.

How does your practice engage with technology?

I take consumer-oriented technological tools that are readily at hand and use them in ways that go against their intention, or the intention of their creators, in order to think critically about the cultural impact of technology. That might involve database pollution or hacking Wi-Fi routers to put people in captive portals. I think of this mode of working as a form of play—of poking, prodding, and finding loopholes.

What was your focus during your time at Eyebeam?

During the Eyebeam fellowship I focused on a portrait project in which I created what I called an “anti-data set” of photographic portraits of drag performers. I asked each participating drag performer to do one typical out-of-drag photo, one drag look, and one recreation of a look based on Divine. The project tested the limits of facial recognition algorithms—which are often confounded by drag makeup—while offering subversive tactics for countering various forms of face-based surveillance. In addition to taking photographs, I interviewed the performers about their experiences with facial recognition on social media.

A white person with long, blonde hair, blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick with a white square framing their face with red facial recognition dots.

Screen Queen Face Fail (Landa Lakes prototype), 2020

Was there a culminating project?

As a project, Screen Queen Face Fail is not yet finalized; it’s a data set and could take a number of forms ranging from a standard photography exhibition to an artist book to something else entirely.

How has dialogue or collaboration with Eyebeam artists and alumni factored into your work?

During the fellowship, I participated in a workshop organized by another Eyebeam fellow, Roopa Vasudevan. We’ve kept in touch and I’m currently taking part in a book project she’s working on. 

How do you think about the role of the artist in society?

My art practice is tied up with my academic work which is tied up with my activist work. I view artmaking as a tool or component of having critical conversations, in this case about technology and society. I like to think of artists as being able to play, experiment, improvise, and explore imaginative potentials in a way that even academics don’t necessarily get the opportunity to do. I see artmaking as supplying creativity to social movements and even bringing joy and fun to politics, though I also recognize that there are ways in which art doesn’t necessarily serve social movement goals.

Artist

Program

Area of Focus

Valencia, a black woman with long black hair in a gray outfit, strikes a dance pose, facing a small, black camera on a short tripod with a gray dead cat.Valencia, a black woman with long black hair in a gray outfit, strikes a dance pose, facing a small, black camera on a short tripod with a gray dead cat.
What is human about technology?
ChangelogEdited: May 16, 2023Published: May 2, 2023

Eyebeam models a new approach to artist-led creation for the public good; we are a non-profit that provides significant professional support and money to exceptional artists for the realization of important ideas that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Nobody else is doing this.

Support Our Work