In Poetic Operations, micha cárdenas considers contemporary digital media, artwork, and poetry in order to articulate trans of color strategies of safety and survival. Drawing on decolonial theory, women of color feminism, media theory, and queer of color critique, cárdenas develops a method she calls algorithmic analysis. Understanding algorithms as sets of instructions designed to perform specific tasks (like a recipe), she breaks them into their component parts, called operations. By focusing on these operations, cárdenas identifies how trans and gender nonconforming artists, especially artists of color, rewrite algorithms to counter violence and develop strategies for liberation. In her analyses of Giuseppe Campuzano's holographic art, Esdras Parra's and Kai Cheng Thom's poetry, Mattie Brice's digital games, Janelle Monáe's music videos, and her own artistic practice, cárdenas shows how algorithmic analysis provides new modes of understanding the complex processes of identity and oppression and the intersection of gender, sexuality, and race.

micha cárdenas, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Performance, Play & Design, and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she directs the Critical Realities Studio. Her book Poetic Operations, forthcoming from Duke University Press, proposes algorithmic analysis as a method for developing a trans of color poetics. cárdenas’s co-authored books The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities (2012) and Trans Desire / Affective Cyborgs (2010) were published by Atropos Press. She is co-editor of the book series Queer/Trans/Digital at NYU Press, with Amanda Philips and Bo Ruberg. She is a member of the artist collective Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0. She is a first generation Colombian American.

Organized by Jeannine Tang.

This event is part of PERFORMANCE IN THE AGE OF PANDEMIC, a virtual, public-facing event series exploring the context of the radical reorganization of life under the current COVID-19 pandemic and other health crises such as the AIDS and 1918 influenza pandemics. Guest artists, curators, activists and scholars will consider how performing artists have responded to and been affected by these worldwide epidemics, the varied forms and functions of the work created during these times, and potential longer term changes that may result, while also making space to consider the state of arts presenting institutions and infrastructure in the wake of COVID-19. Hosted by faculty from the Department of the Arts at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School. All events are free and open to the public, but prior registration is required.

Zoom link will be sent in advance of the event.