In 1994, the Wright Laboratory in Ohio produced a proposal for the Unites States Air Force on constructing an “aphrodisiac chemical that would make enemy soldiers ‘sexually irresistible’ to each other.” This later became known and popularly visualized as the gay bomb.
When the US military attempted to pursue the creation of a gay bomb, homosexuality became a subjugated weapon of the nation-state. Homosexuality existed as a strategy to defeat our nation’s enemy. The gay bomb would be a bomb of shame—what the military called a “‘distasteful but completely non-lethal’ blow to morale.”
The gay bomb makes homosexuality complicit with nationalism, imperialism, and war.
Yet, other gay bombs exist...
Queer Technologies' Gay Bomb is a hacked concept, intercepting flows and signals of terrorist paranoia, networked fear, distributed warfare, and homophobic weaponry.
...so, how should you build a queer gay bomb?
presented at
somatic SENSOR
Highways Performance Space
Santa Monica, CA
January 2011
video shot by Frankie Martin, edited by Zach Blas