Under Camera: Digital Drag, Negotiated Identity and Performativity 镜头之下

Covid-19 has forced us to rely on the internet and cameras for our learning, work and socialising. Cameras on smartphones and computers are monitoring our life. As the use of facial recognition technology becomes more widespread, how will our understanding of gender and identity be affected?

Exploring how gender and identity are negotiated through performativity and technology, the last event introduces two digital art performances.

Qingyi Ren presents Gender Narratives in AI/ML, investigating the tensions between gender and digital facial recognition. The artist alters their appearance in the application of various materials including paper, textile, metal, string, and makeup. Throughout the work Ren applies these materials demanding the facial recognition software both recognize and determine them again and again, slowly creating a myriad of portraits that determines Ren only in binary terms.

At the same time, STIGMA delivers Try Before You Buy, which is a simulation kit for trying gender and identity, taking the form of an interactive spatial film. It contains different scales of physical and social simulations, performable from home stage, opening the potential of exploring one’s multitudes. By presence with the narrated binary or non-binary questions, body measurements on IDs such as gender or age do not define nor differentiate people. Now, when you look into the camera, how do you think the data recognises your identity?

Artists:

Qingyi Ren (they/them), is a queer artist, visual designer, and researcher based in London. Broadly, they are interested in gender identity theory, AI ethics, and digital identity. They explore the real-world implications of machine learning for those with historically marginalized identities and are committed to being exposed to the existing bias that is still expanded under the guise of being technology-neutral.

STIGMA, we intend to be cultural stimulants. We are a London-based multidisciplinary art and curatorial practice retelling social stigmas through originally-developed methods using interactive films and space curation. We chose to reside in the in-between and recreate from the othered - the stigmatised - revealing and reinventing different versions of realities and opening them up. We value a collaborative nature in our works, as we work closely with marginalised groups and always aim to provoke discussion with a wider audience across different fields.

Moderator

Heshen Xie is awarded the Doctoral degree in Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham. His research interests covers film festival studies and queer studies..

Date:

25 June 2022 Saturday, 11am-12.30pm, UK Time | 12pm-1.30pm CEST UTC+2| 6pm-7.30pm China Time | 6am-7.30am NY Time | 8pm-9.30pm Melbourne Time

Location:

Zoom

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