Culture Now: Zach Blas & Seb Franklin

Artist and writer Zach Blas is in conversation with Seb Franklin, discussing Blas’ current research project Contra-Internet, which works to describe the emerging artistic militancies and political subversions of neoliberal networked digital technologies.

Zach Blas is an artist and writer whose work engages technology, queerness, and politics. He is the creator of art group Queer Technologies, a founding member of The Public School Durham, and a PhD at Duke University in the Literature Program. Blas is producing two books: Escaping the Face (2016), and Informatic Opacity: The Art of Defacement in Biometric Times, a theoretical study of biometric facial recognition and refusals of recognition. Blas is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a resident at the Delfina Foundation.

Seb Franklin is a Lecturer in Contemporary Literature in the Department of English at King's College London. His research examines the historical relationships between technical media, systems of political-economic thought, and cultural production.  His first book, Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic, was published by the MIT Press in 2015.