Poetic Operations and Trans Ecologies

Wednesday, April 6  •  1PM in the STAMP Gallery

In this talk, Dr. cárdenas will discuss her new book Poetic Operations, as well as her augmented reality artwork about climate justice and her forthcoming publication "Poetics ofTrans Ecologies."

In Poetic Operations, artist and theorist micha cárdenas considers contemporary digital media, artwork, and poetry in order to articulate trans of color strategies for safety and survival. Drawing on decolonial theory, women of color feminism, media theoryand 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-non-conforming artists, especiallyartists 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 ChengThom'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.

This talk is part of alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms at the Stamp Gallery, on display February 10 - April 6, and is supported by the Immersive Media Design Program, the HarrietTubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, University Libraries, STAMPEvents, and the Maryland State Arts Council.

RSVP at stamp.umd.edu/PoeticOperations