hemi | micha cárdenas

Call for Performances: Experimental Collectivities: Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics GSI Convergence 2013

Collective Sun: Spirit House, from Hemispheric Institute GSI Convergence 2012, Durham, NC

Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics Graduate Student Initiative (Hemi GSI)
Convergence 2013: Experimental Collectivities: Performance Nights | October 11th-13th, 2013
Los Angeles, CA

Call for Performances

Deadline Friday, April 12th 2013

How can we imagine collectivity in the present moment, after new media, when connection is often mediated down to 140 characters, coalitions are negotiated through Facebook and embodied occupations of the streets have reinvigorated people around the world? The Convergence 2013 Curatorial Committee, Zach Blas, Micha Cárdenas and Dino Dinco, invite artists to propose performances within the theme and practice of “Experimental Collectivities.” We are particularly interested in exploring methods that will collectively produce and critique systems of knowledge/power.

The 2nd Hemi GSI Convergence will be an exploratory space of lateral collaboration and alternative pedagogy among scholars, artists and activists from throughout the Americas. Convergence 2013 will be jointly hosted by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Southern California (USC) on October 11–13, 2013. Hemi GSI will also plan an optional pre-Convergence hosted by University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in La Jolla and Tijuana on October 10th, 2013.

The performance nights at Convergence 2013 will take place on and off campus, in collaboration with local art galleries and can include performances in public space. The exact venues are still being determined.

Possible themes to be adressed include:

Visualizing Cultural Circuits

Tangible and Corporeal Imperialisms

Querying Queerness

Mediatized Cultures and Virtual Communities

Decolonial Feminism

Tourism, Reception and the Ethics of Visiting

Indigeneity, Memory and Praxis

Ecocriticism and the Non-human

Rethinking Textuality

Queer Technologies

Trans/realities

Artists in the Southern California and Northern Baja California regions are encouraged to apply, as the possibility of travel funds is limited.

To apply, please:

1) email a copy of your CV and short bio (200 words) with the Subject: Proposal for Hemi GSI Performance Nights

2) Email a paragraph describing your proposed performance (250-500 words).

3) Describe your technical needs such as projectors, sound, amount of space, lighting, network access, etc.

4) All materials should go to: hemigsi@gmail.com

*Please look for a Call for General Convergence Participation soon*

Performing at the Hemispheric Institute’s Convergence 2012: The Geo/Body Politics of Emancipation at Duke

I’ll be presenting a performance of Autonets and a short film as part of the Experimental Communities exhibition at the opening reception of the Hemispheric Institute’s Convergence 2012 The Geo/Body Politics of Emancipation at Duke this year. I’m also leading a working group and doing a q and a panel about the film Wildness with Wu Tsang, Roya Rastegar and Jack Halberstam. I love the work of the Hemispheric Institute and I’m so honored to be innvolved. I can’t wait!

They Say We’re Sick – photos from performance

They Say We’re Sick, part of my Femme Disturbance series was performed at the Institute of Multimedia Literacy in Los Angeles and at the Creatie Activism in the Age of Digital Technologies Symposium at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU on Friday March 30th, 2012, 1:30PM PST / 4:30PM EST. Claire Viele was my collaborator for some of the photos used in the performance and fashion hacking. These documentation photos of the performance are by Veronica Paredes.

They Say We’re Sick is a live performance of theory, poetry and media from my personal archive. Using a feminist aesthetic of focusing on everyday experiences that are autobiographical and deeply personal, I discuss the intersections of transgender and disability, by way of the most important femmes in my life. The media in the performance will be photos and videos taken mostly with my cell phone of events in my life. This marks a new direction in my work, an attempt to integrate my practices of philosophical writing, poetic writing and performance into one experience.

The Femme Disturbance series considers the possibilities for queer femme affect to disturb rationalist traditions that give rise to capitalism, heterosexism, ableism, racism and other forms of exclusion. This performance explores the way in which a femme attraction, between a genderqueer transgender person and a queer woman, can create a sense of solidarity for different forms of embodiment deemed excessive: the femme, the mentally ill, the differently abled and the gender non conforming.

They Say We’re Sick: Performance Friday, March 30th in LA and NYC

Come see They Say We’re Sick, part of my Femme Disturbance series at the Institute of Multimedia Literacy in Los Angeles and at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU on Friday March 30th, 2012, 1:30PM PST / 4:30PM EST.

They Say We’re Sick is a live performance of theory, poetry and media from my personal archive. Using a feminist aesthetic of focusing on everyday experiences that are autobiographical and deeply personal, I will discuss the intersections of transgender and disability, by way of the most important femmes in my life. The media in the performance will be photos and videos taken mostly with my cell phone of events in my life. This marks a new direction in my work, an attempt to integrate my practices of philosophical writing, poetic writing and performance into one experience.

The Femme Disturbance series considers the possibilities for queer femme affect to disturb rationalist traditions that give rise to capitalism, heterosexism, ableism, racism and other forms of exclusion. This performance will explore the way in which a femme attraction, between a genderqueer transgender person and a queer woman, can create a sense of solidarity for different forms of embodiment deemed excessive: the femme, the mentally ill, the differently abled and the gender non conforming.

Digital Humanities: Creative Activism in the Age of Digital Technologies

The Digital Humanities Working Research Group and the Hemispheric Institute invite you to a symposium on Creative Activism in the Age of Digital TechnologiesFriday, March 30th, 2012 from 2–5pm
Digital technologies have offered scholars, artists, and activists new strategies to address a broad array of social problems, enabling powerful new connections between artistic production, political action, and humanities scholarship. This symposium will explore the relationship between creativity, activism and digital technologies, and examine the new forms of political intervention, collaboration, and corporalities which these have enabled.

The event will include presentations by Faye Ginsburg (NYU), Jacques Servin (The Yes Men/NYU), and Aaron Bady (UC Berkeley), a digital performance by Micha Cardenas (USC), and responses from Diana Taylor (NYU), Michael Stoller (NYU), Tavia Nyong’o (NYU),Nicholas Mirzoeff (NYU), and Debra Levine (NYU).

Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics
20 Cooper Sq, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003

Free, photo ID required. Reception to follow.

This event is co-sponsored by The Digital Humanities Working Research Group, a project of the Humanities Initiative led by Diana Taylor (University Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish, and Director of the Hemispheric Institute) and Michael Stoller (Director of Collections and Research Services, New York University Libraries) that brings together a broad range of humanists and technologists from across NYU to discuss the role and implication of digital technologies in the Humanities.

Review of Trans Desire by Zach Blas in E-Misférica [#transgender #politics #art #theory #queer]

I am so honored to say that Zach Blas has reviewed my book, and his review is now available on the E-Misférica website. E-Misférica is the journal of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics and their latest issue, 7.2, is on the theme “After Truth”.

In Nietzsche and Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze describes the world as Nietzsche posits it, as “neither true nor real but living” (1962, 184). In this world of the living, life gains value—not truth—by being evaluated and interpreted. These actions suggest we frame the living in a particular way to return certain values and sensations. Framing, in this sense, is an act of creation that is political: to frame is to create new values, generate new experiments, and produce new possibilities.

Micha Cárdenas’ Trans Desire frames desire as the basis for a radical collective politics that is queer, feminist, and anti-capitalist. Building from a Lacanian notion of desire, Cárdenas reveals desire itself to be ontologically trans, that is, desire as in-between, liminal, becoming, and in process. Framing desire as trans allows Cárdenas to formulate a desire which contests standards, rigidities, and binaries of all kinds. This desire is a transcendental empiricism, always extending beyond the known to materially make the world and us anew. In Trans Desire, Cárdenas offers us nothing less than a practical theory of desire that creates livable, affirmative worlds that resist the violence of capitalism and heteronormativity.

Read the rest in E-Misférica

Coming to NYC, then Chiapas and Emily Hicks’ Complexity Fluxus Exhibition

If you’re in NYC this weekend, you can come see Elle and I give two talks at the Next Hackers on Planet Earth conference on Friday night and then at Bluestockings books on Saturday as part of the This is Forever series on Autonomous politics. Then, we’re heading to Chiapas, Mexico to teach part of the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics’ summer class on Art and Resistance.

More details about all of those events are here: Our talk at The Next Hope | Hacktivism Workshop at the HEMI in Chiapas

Also, Emily Hicks recently announced that she’s going to be teaching my book with Barbara Fornssler [powell's] in her fall course at SDSU “Theory from the Street”! I’m so excited to see how it goes, and I’ll also be using it in my Gender and Sexuality in Art class at UCSD. I love Emily, she’s so warm and brilliant. Every time I talk to her or get an email from her is a wonderful experience in itself. She also announced a parallel exhibition called Complexity Fluxus Exhibition which is open for submissions and sounds really interesting. Check it out at Evolver, which has a beautiful quote at the top, which I loved so much I’ll just quote it here:

“Banish the word ‘struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we have been waiting for.” — Hopi elders