Lachlan Humphreys

“pathwalker” investigates gait recognition systems, an emerging biometric surveillance tool, that is able to identify individuals based solely on their pattern of walking. The images and artifacts displayed reflect my engagement with the history and functioning of the technology, through which I was able to conceptualize and test methods of altering my walk and becoming unrecognizable. Ranging from benign to shocking, the practical to the symbolic, my methods draw on a personal and global history of rendering oneself invisible to systems of surveillance. Informed by an ongoing reckoning with my queerness, privilege, and positionality within systems of imperialism, this project questions the camera and its technological offspring—not as siloed instances of militarized innovation, but as symptomatic developments in the histories of violence, colonialism, and exploitation. Representation is undoubtedly important, but when being seen turns into being watched, forging and demanding opacity becomes a necessary and radical form of resistance.

Lachlan Humphreys is an artist. Born in London, raised in Qatar, and hosted on servers all around the world, they currently live and work in New York City.