ABSTRACT
In the context of digital technologies, epidermalization (Browne 2015) means that certain bodies in biometric applications such as facial recognition, iris, and retina scans are unequally reduced to data so that they are either disproportionately captured or misrecognised with a similar effect of discrediting. Both forms of automated inequality are expressions of the constructed detachment of the body from the category of personhood and subjecthood that accompanies epidermalization (Fanon 1967). In the context of such technologies that serve cycle monitoring and birth control, BIPOC who menstruate are repeatedly affected by this detachment or dehumanisation. Menstrual cycle monitoring apps aimed at contraception sometimes do not price stress-related cycle deviations. This structurally disadvantages menstruating BIPOC, as they are disproportionately affected by stress-inducing conditions such as precarious employment or racist police violence, to name a few. In this chapter, I take these de-subjectifying artificial intelligence applications as a starting point to ask, through two artistic works, what concept of subjectification can critically respond to such algorithmic logics. To this end, for the discussion of Tabita Rezaire's video “Sugar Walls Teardom” (2016) and Luiza Prado de O. Martins’ GIF essay “All Directions at Once” (2018), I will focus on Ramon Amaro's conceptualisation of the “Black technical object” (2019), which I will connect to Wendy Hui Kyong Chun's approach of “Queering Homophily” (2018). In doing so, I am particularly interested in transgressive aesthetics of incompatibility and conflict. Exemplarily, I develop two aesthetic concepts based on the artistic works: patching and hoarding.
