Youth Workshop at Femina Potens
I’m so happy to be facilitating a workshop on Political Systems, via Theater of the Oppressed, performance and poetry, at Femina Potens next week in their series of workshops for LGBTQ youth. Here’s their announcement about the series that my workshop will be a part of.
Femina Potens is thrilled to announce that our FP Family & Youth Program will be pairing up with queer youth organization LYRIC to teach art, film, and writing courses every monday starting October 17th – May 2012. Our course will consist of 7 queer youth ages 17 – 19 and will conclude with a screening of a documentary on the program, a gallery exhibit, and written works created by the youth during the program. We will be updating you monthly on our youth’s progress. For more information on LYRIC visit LYRIC.org
Performances, Workshop and Panels in September in Istanbul and Toronto
Elle and I will be presenting performances, workshops and panels in the next two weeks in Istanbul and Toronto. Read on for more details…
ISEA Istanbul: Queer Viralities: Resistant Practices in New Media Art and Philosophy
In this panel, we will focus on queer new media art and philosophy that uses and intervenes into the viral to form a radical politics of revolt and utopia. The viral will be engaged with technically, philosophically, artistically, biologically, and affectively.
Dates: Tuesday, 20 September, 2011 – 13:00 – 14:30
Chair Person: Zach Blas
Presenters: Elle Mehrmand
Micha Cárdenas
Location: Sabanci Center Room 4
Sabanci Center, Levent
The intensification and proliferation of global connectivity has opened digital networked culture to universal contagion. Indeed, it has been argued we now live in a viral ecology under the sign of viral capitalism. As viralities spread into various realms of culture, new media artists explore the viral as that which has the ability to control and restrict as well as distribute and liberate.
Our current viral ecology has opened up new tactics of resistance for various artists, activists, and cultural producers. In this panel, we will focus on queer new media art and philosophy that uses and intervenes into the viral to form a radical politics of revolt and utopia. The viral will be engaged with technically, philosophically, artistically, biologically, and affectively. Our aim is to show that while viral rhetoric and discourses have marginalized and controlled queer populations, the viral remains an allusive, volatile potential that can be experimented with toward creating new queer politics and worlds.
Blas, Cárdenas, and Mehrmand will give theoretical artist talks, and Skanse will follow with a philosophical response to the viral in media theory.
Cárdenas and Mehrmand will discuss their current collaboration virus.cirus, an episodic series of performances using wearable electronics and live audio to bridge virtual and physical spaces that explores queer futures of latex sexuality amidst a speculative world of virus hysteria and DIY medicine. Blas will speak on new works from his ongoing Queer Technologies project that attempt to formulate a viral aesthetics based on a replicating difference of never-being-the-sameness against capital’s own modulating structure. Skanse will address new directions in viral philosophy with particular concern for how this perpetual ‘movement’ of the virus is tied to notions of novelty within contemporary aesthetic discourse.
For paper abstracts and images, see:
http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/panel/queer-viralities-resistant-practices-new-media-art-philosophy
ISEA Istanbul: Virtual Doppelgangers Embodiment, Morphogenesis, and Transversal Action
The session will address both artworks and theoretical frameworks that engage our replicated bodies, the affective relations they create, and transversal effects across multiple environments, platforms, and physical appearances.
Dates: Saturday, 17 September, 2011 – 13:00 – 14:30
Chair: Prof. Patrick Lichty
2nd Chair: Prof. Susan Elizbeth Ryan
Presenters: Gregory Little
Elle Mehrmand
Micha Cárdenas
Stephanie Rothenberg
In 1969 Gilles Deleuze theorized the “BwO” or Body Without Organs (in The Logic of the Sense, after Artaud’s original term). It refers to the virtual dimension of the body and its potentials, likened to the egg as site of embodiment (in Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus)—a set of multiple potentialities as well as dysfunctional repetitions. In this panel we seek to explore the relations between fleshly bodies and digitized ones as sites of embodiment for our current, informatically energized existences.
From Facebook relationships to performances in Second Life, many of us experience various parts of our lives virtually today. But how are these experiences absorbed into our so-called “real lives”? In what ways do our virtual and physical spaces intersect—are they agglomerated realities (Haraway), or embedded in some ontological continuum? There have been controversies and supporting studies (esp. concerning virtual games) suggesting that excess social mediation is harmful towards our “sense of reality” and ability to interact in society. But researchers of virtual life like Nick Yee (Director of the Daedalus Project survey of MMO players) have shown that avatar experiences positively affect our physical lives and personalities. Still, new research supports old wisdom that too much virtuality is harmful toward our “sense of reality” and ability to interact in society. How are we to think about our bodies and their virtual doubles?
Artists and designers know the metaphysics of the BwO. They have created innovative ways to explore how virtual experiences can radically transform our real-world identities, as with Micha Cárdenas’s Becoming Dragon (2008); or socioeconomically impact the physical world, as did Rothenberg and Crouse’s Invisible Threads/DoubleHappiness Jeans project (2007-8). The session will address both artworks and theoretical frameworks that engage our replicated bodies, the affective relations they create, and transversal effects across multiple environments, platforms, and physical appearances.
For images and paper abstracts, see: http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/panel/virtual-doppelgangers-embodiment-morphogenesis-and-transversal-action
e_fagia: Digital Event ’11: Subversive Technologies
http://www.e-fagia.org/
Curated by Arlan Londoño, with Gabriel Roldos and Federica Matelli
September 15 to October 2 of 2011
Toronto Free Gallery
1277 Bloor Street West
Toronto, ON M4E 2J8
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday-Friday 12-5pm
Saturday 12-6pm
This year’s Digital Event Subversive Technologies investigates how artists respond to communication technology as one of the major sources of power in contemporary societies. During the last few years we have seen an increase in web and electronic artists and activists that use digital tools to create an impact on their societies or to register social unrest. The artists participating in Subversive Technologies use communication, information and networking technologies as a tool to reject control society, in an attempt to liberate bodies across spaces/territories, and across social and political categories.
Digital Event’11 features three installations, as well as web art, performances and video art works by more than 20 artists from canada and abroad. The art exhibition will be presented in conjunction with conferences, workshops and live media events by artists, curators, activists and scholars from different disciplines. Some of the artists present in this event are Ricardo Dominguez, Micha Cardenas, Elle Mehrmand, No Media Collective, Alessandra Renzi, Roberta Buiani, Ulysses Castellanos, Sofia Escobar, Juan David Casas, Miguel García, Angie Bonino, Ian Paul, Nacho Duran and Balam Soto.
Opening reception:
September 15, from 6 – 9 pm
Featuring an artist talk by Ricardo Dominguez and a media installation by No Media Collective.
Artist talks:
We are proud to present Ricardo Dominguez, co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), past co-director of Thing (post.thing.net), and past member of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE).
Tuesday september 13, from 7:30 – 9 pm
Auditorium, OCAD University, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto, ON, M5T 1W1
Co-presented by the Faculty of Art, OCAD University as part of Art Creates Change: The Kym Pruesse Speaker Series.
Thursday September 15, 6 – 7 pm
At Toronto Free Gallery
Live Streaming
by No Media Collective
Thursday September 15, from 6 – 9 pm
Saturday September 17, and 24, from 2 – 5 pm
Saturday October 1, from 2 – 5 pm
Performances:
Reverse Apotheosis: End of The World a performance and new media presentation by Ulysses Castellanos, Sofia Escobar and Juan David Casas curated by Gabriel Roldos from Fluid New Media Lab, New York, USA.
Saturday September 17, from 2 – 3 pm
Virus.circus.laboratory by transgender performance and new media artists Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand
Saturday September 24, from 2 – 3 pm
All performances will be presented at Toronto Free Gallery
Workshops:
From Html Conceptualism to Transborder Disturbances
by Ricardo Dominguez
At 80 Gould Street, Room 202, Rogers Communications Centre Ryerson University
With the support of The Infoscape Centre For The Study Of Social Media, Ryerson University
Monday 12, Wednesday 14, and Friday 16 of September
from 5 – 8 pm
Performing The Body: Wearable Electronics, Sound And Erotics
by Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand
At LIFT, Liason Of Independent Filmmakers Of Toronto
1137 Dupont Street, M6H 2A3
From Monday 26 to Wednesday 28 of September, 6 – 10 pm
Activism Beyond The Interface an itinerant production lab
by Alessandra Renzi and Roberta Buiani
At toronto Free Gallery
One day workshop and performance on October 1,
from 12 – 4 pm
On Screen:
Political Subversion, a curatorial video project presented by Federica Matelli from Liminalb, Barcelona, Spain that includes the following program:
Monography
by Angie Bonino
Saturday September 17, from 2 – 3 pm
Interferences
by Miguel García
Saturday September 24, from 2 – 3 pm
Digital Event’11 is possible thanks to the support from: Canada Council For The Arts, The Toronto Free Gallery, Tinto Coffee House, aluCine Festival And OCAD University. We would also like to acknowledge the support from the artists Ricardo Rozental, Edgardo Moreno and Rodrigo Hernandez, and all the volunteers that have made this possible
Queering Pedagogy Workshop
I’ll be speaking at this event, please join us!
please join the Transnational Queer and Transgender Studies Group
for
a
round table
on
queering
pedagogy
wednesday
february
16
, 2011, 4‐6pm, UCSD
lgbt resource
center
join
faculty,
staff,
and
students
for
food, drinks,
and
conversation
as
we
consider
questions
of
the
“queer”
in
the
classroom,
including:
what
does
it
mean
to
consider
“queer”
as
a
methodology
and
a
pedagogical
practice?
Is
there
a
queer
or
trans
studies
canon?
What
is
a
queer
classroom,
queer
assignment,
or
queer
strategy
of
assessment?
Does
identity
matter
in
a
queer
class?
refreshments will be served
Come see Elle and I perform in SF at Arse Elektronika!
###### monochrom’s
##### Arse Elektronika 2010
#### SPACE RACY
### Talks, machines, workshops and performances
## San Francisco, September 30-October 3, 2010
# At Chez Poulet, Center for Sex and Culture, Parisoma, Noisebridge and Mission Comics and Art
# http://www.monochrom.at/arse-elektronika/
We’re performing here:
### SCHEDULE
## Opening Night and Prixxx Arse 2010
# Hosted by monochrom’s Johannes Grenzfurthner.
With a superspecial keynote by Susie Bright (All Along the SexTower: Sex on Stage in America, from Susie Bright’s Reporters Notebook)
Featuring many guests stars, like Thomas S. Roche, Charlie Anders (Erotic mind control via the Internet) and Elle Mehrmand and Micha Cárdenas (virus.circus)
Thursday, September 30, 2010
9:00 PM at Chez Poulet (3359 Cesar Chavez, San Francisco)
and doing a workshop here:
## Screw-It-Yourself: Workshops and Unconference
# With Christophe, Maia Marinelli, E. Conrad, Elle Mehrmand, Micha Cárdenas, Zach Blas, Heather Kelley, Robert Glashüttner
Sunday, October 3, 2010
2:00 PM at Noisebridge (2169 Mission Street, San Francisco)
Read more here!
Hacktivism Workshop at the HEMI in Chiapas
It’s shaping up to be a busy summer with the MCASD show in June and now a trip to Chiapas in July! I’ll be teaching a workshop on Hacktivism, including Electronic Civil Disobedience and it’s recent usage in the struggles for education at the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics’ Art and Resistance event. It’s in Chiapas in July at the HEMI’s center with Fortaleza de Mujer Maya. I can’t wait to be back in the magical mountains of Chiapas.
Summer 2010: Art and Resistance
San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico
July 19–August 6, 2010
Taught by Diana Taylor, Jesusa Rodríguez (Resistencia Creativa, Mexico), and Lorie Novak
My workshop at Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics’ Summer Encuentro 2009
here’s an update on my upcoming workshop in Bogota! I’m so excited!
b.a.n.g. lab researcher Micha Cardenas will be presenting a workshop at this year’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics (HEMI) Summer Encuentro in Bogota, Colombia. The title of her workshop is “New Hacktivism: From Electronic Civil Disobedience to Mixed Reality Performance”. The outline for the workshop is below. The Encuentro’s theme is “Staging Citizenship”. From the description of the Encuentro: “Our 7th Encuentro invites interested participants to investigate “cultural rights” and their complex relationship to citizenship in both historical and contemporary contexts. We understand cultural rights as a juridical figure, a technology of power and an articulation that brings together multiple political demands, social subjects and modalities of citizenship. They allow us to explore the relationship between performance and politics through diverse expressive forms, analytic categories, disciplines, traditions and movements.”
Workshop brief outline:
Hacktivism: From Electronic Civil Disobedience to Mixed Reality Performance
Workshop for the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics
Encuentro 2009: Staging Citizenship
by Micha Cárdenas
“we are the virus of the new world disorder
rupturing the symbolic from within
saboteurs of big daddy mainframe
the clitoris is a direct line to the matrix”
- Cyberfeminist Manifesto, VNS Matrix
“Those who are against, while escaping from the local and particular constraints of their human condition, must also continually attempt to construct a new body and a new life… These barbaric deployments work on human relations in general, but we can recognize them today first and foremost in corporeal relations and configurations of gender and sexuality. Conventional norms of corporeal and sexual relations between and within genders are increasingly open to challenge and transformation. Bodies themselves transform and mutate to create new posthuman bodies.”
Hardt and Negri, Empire
The workshop will trace the trajectory from Hacktivism to Mixed Reality Performance, considering the possibilities opened up by networked gestures. Beginning with a discussion of Electronic Civil Disobedience, its motivations and mechanisms, the workshop will introduce participants to a number of strategies which are being used in post-contemporary political struggles including Free/Libre/Open Source, DIY, Hacklabs, Social Media and interventions in online public spaces such as Second Life.
Day 1 – Introduction to Hacktivism and Electronic Civil Disobedience
Intro to topics: Hacktivism, Networked Performance, Online Public Space
Digital Resistance as a response to the changing forms of Capital
Society as Assemblage
Electronic Civil Disobedience: Electronic Disturbance Theater
Virtual Sit-Ins
Day 2 – Free/Libre/Open Source, Hacklabs and Science of the Oppressed
Autonomy and World Building
Free/Libre/Open Source
Code as resistance in the Alter-Globalization Movement: Indymedia, the Zapatistas
Hacklabs from Western Europe to the borderlands
Science of the Oppressed: From ACT-UP to Cyberfeminism to Fadiat to Hackmeets
Social Media: Myspace, Youtube, Twitter, Orkut
Boredom Patrol, a silly netwar in the borderlands
From Twitter to Identica
Day 3 – Interventions in Online Public Space
The Changing Nature of Public Space
Physical, Online, Mediated Public Spaces
Virtual Worlds, World of Warcraft, Second Life, Second Front
Becoming Dragon, gender and sexuality
Mixed Reality Performance
Motion capture, physical computing, new forms of display