Harris Kornstein is an artist, scholar, and drag queen whose work focuses on queer play. Their work has appeared in venues from SFMOMA to SXSW EDU, Stanford University, and Saturday Night Live, as well as in academic journals, media outlets like Wired and The Guardian, and three children’s books. They serve as board president of Drag Story Hour. Additionally, they have received grants/fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Eyebeam, and Apex Art. They are an assistant professor at the University of Arizona.
“At CultureHub, I’m working on a project exploring how drag makeup techniques (e.g., contour, exaggerated features, reflective glitter, etc.) can be used to confuse facial recognition algorithms, offering new forms of culturally-specific but easily-adoptable counter-surveillance tactics. It is part of a larger hybrid art and research project exploring “drag and/as technology,” or how drag performance offers both unique conceptual frameworks and actionable tools for countering the harms of technologies.”