Online Lecture with Beyond Matter Artist in Residence Zach Bals

Across his works, Zach Blas closely engages the materiality of digital technologies while also drawing out the philosophies and imaginaries lurking in artificial intelligence, the internet, predictive policing, airport security, and biometric recognition. Blas embraces the media of computation, video, sculpture, and music in his installations that sharply confront biometric surveillance, the cult of optimization, and the reification of data bodies. The artist uses research-based practices to scrutinize the relationship between digital technologies and the cultures and politics that animate them.

Blas’s residency project in the framework of project Beyond Matter looks at aspects of religion that are uncannily mirrored in contemporary cultures of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In his talk, Blas will focus on recent projects that explore AI and religion through emotional crying: the web-based work 576 Tears (2022), commissioned by UP Projects for This is Public Space, and the immersive installation Profundior (Lachryphagic Transmutation Deus-Motus-Data Network) (2022), currently on view at the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art.

Zach Blas is an artist, filmmaker, and writer whose practice spans moving image, computation, theory, performance, and science fiction. Blas engages the materiality of digital technologies while also drawing out the philosophies and imaginaries lurking in artificial intelligence, biometric recognition, predictive policing, airport security, and the internet. Blas has exhibited, lectured, and held screenings internationally, recently at the British Art Show 9, Tate Modern, Walker Art Center, 2018 Gwangju Biennale, Matadero Madrid, 68th Berlin International Film Festival, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gasworks, e-flux, ZKM Center for Art and Media, and Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo. His practice has been supported by Creative Capital, Arts Council England, and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. His artist monograph Unknown Ideals will be published in 2022 with Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst and Sternberg Press. Blas is an Assistant Professor of Visual Studies in the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.

Beyond Matter is co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union and German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.