Facial Weaponization Communiqué: Fag Face

Facial Weaponization Communiqué: Fag Face protests against biometric facial recognition — and the inequalities these technologies propagate — by proposing the creation of “collective masks” that are modeled from the aggregated facial data of many faces, resulting in amorphous masks that cannot be detected as human faces by biometric facial recognition technologies. One mask in particular, the Fag Face Mask, is generated from the biometric facial data of many queer men’s faces and is a response to scientific studies that link determining sexual orientation through rapid facial recognition techniques. These masks intersect with social movements’ use of masking as an opaque tool of collective transformation that refuses dominant forms of political representation.