becoming transreal [poster], a mixed reality, biodigital performance at UCLA on Nov3rd

Posted on October 12, 2010 by azdelslade

Performance by Micha Cárdenas and Elle Mehrmand in collaboration Chris Head
UCLA Freud Playhouse
November 3rd, 4pm
Co-sponsored by The Center for Performance Studies, the UCLA Department of Theater and CRCA
Panel after the performance at 5pm with Sandy Stone, Amy Sara Carroll and Ricardo Dominguez

What if you could become anything? What happens after species change surgery becomes a reality? becoming transreal speculates on a future in which the promises of bionanotechnology have become realized, and yet as capitalism has continued to fail, both the interiors of our bodies and the virtual world have become totally commodified. you can become anything, but to finance your whims of identity transformation, the same nanohormones that transform your body are also producing drugs for others. becoming transreal looks at transgender experience through a lens of slipstream science fiction poetry about bio-nano drug piracy. The performance uses motion capture to interface with Second Life avatars and 3D stereoscopic imagery to immerse the audience in this transreal world.

Inspired in part by Tales from the Matter Market and a continuation of Becoming Dragon, this performance asks what our lives are like when we have become both the factory and the product, asks how we can resist capitalism when neoliberalism’s collapse has wound itself into the perfection of a single atom, into the fabric of beauty and into our most intimate emotions. In becoming transreal, Cárdenas and Mehrmand will use devices sold both for quasi-medical purposes and for sexual pleasure, part of the economies of medicalized sexuality, the grey area of “elective” medical products and medical play sex toys, to make visible the pain of transition.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Theater, the School of Theater, Film, and Television, LGBT Studies, the Center for the Study of Women and The Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance. Additional support provided by San Diego State University’s Second Life Initiative, Aztlan Island.

This event is free and open to the general public.