Description

The project Biometric Futures traces the relevance of biometric technology for re-making of bodies, populations and political subjects in contemporary India. Biometric technology is proliferating all around the globe and being used to classify and sort populations at airports, in welfare offices, and even at sales points. It promises to provide a particularly accurate way of identifying people by mapping unique patterns of individual bodies, such as fingerprints, irises, gaits, or voice patterns. In India biometric technology is prolific in the domains of welfare and banking and is used for recording attendance and controlling access at work places.

Biometic Futures investigates the social consequences of the application of biometric technology in quotidian management systems. When writing subjects are replaced by scanned bodies new power-knowledge constellations emerge. They fetishize the body as original source of knowledge while simultaneously struggling with dynamic live bodies. By investigating the multiple linkages and ruptures between human actions, complex failure-prone infrastructures and contradictory policy intentions, the contours of a new body-politics becomes visible.