Micha Cárdenas

Micha Cárdenas
Allied Media Conference 2012 Opening Ceremony
Born	1977
Nationality	American
Education	University of California, San Diego
Known for	Performance

Micha Cárdenas is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington | Bothell. Cárdenas is a transgender artist and theorist. She creates and studies trans of color movement in digital media, where movement includes migration, performance and mobility.

Artwork and performances

Cárdenas has presented her work around the world, including keynote performances at the 2014 Digital Gender workshop at Umeå University in Sweden, 2013 Dark Side of the Digital Conference and 2012 Allied Media Conference, performances at the 2012 Zero1 Biennial in San Jose, and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics 7th Encuentro in Bogotá, Colombia and collective exhibitions at the 2010 California Biennial, and the 2009 Mérida Biennial. In 2008, Cardenas performed Becoming Dragon, a 365 hour mixed reality performance in Second Life. Recent projects include Local Autonomy Networks and virus.circus, a collaboration with Elle Mehrmand. She has also curated exhibits in Los Angeles, New York and Tijuana, Mexico.,

As a member of the Electronic Disturbance Theater/b.a.n.g. lab, she helped design the Transborder Immigrant Tool, a GPS device designed to guide immigrants illegally crossing the US-Mexico border and to help them find water stations during their journey. Cardenas argued that the aim of this project was "about giving water to somebody who's dying in the desert of dehydration," but which critics claimed was an irresponsible use of government funds, and a tool that would also help facilitate other illegal activity, like smuggling, as well. Ultimately, all investigations of the project were dropped without finding any misuse of funds or illegal activity on the part of the artists.

Books

In 2013, Cárdenas' poetry and a statement on poetics was published in the anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics ISBN 978-1937658106 by Nightboat Books. The editors describe the book as the first anthology of transgender and genderqueer poetry.

In 2012, Cárdenas' co-authored book The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities ISBN 0-9839152-4-5 was published by Atropos Press. The book discusses art, games and activism that use multiple realities, including augmented reality, mixed reality and alternate reality approaches.

Cárdenas' first book, co-authored with Barbara Fornssler, Trans Desire / Affective Cyborgs ISBN 0982530994 discusses an experimental conception of politics based in desire.

Cárdenas has published several works related to the theoretical issues raised in her performances including "Becoming Dragon, A Transversal Technology Study" in the 2013 book Critical Digital Studies ISBN 978-1442614666 from University of Toronto press, and "I Am Transreal" in the book Gender Outlaws the Next Generation, edited by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman. Additional published works include "Technesexual Interface: Erotic Mixed Reality Performance", in Digimag.it co-authored with Elle Mehrmand.

Teaching and research

Cárdenas was a Lecturer in the Visual Arts Department and Critical Gender Studies Program at UCSD in 2009 and 2010. She was previously the Interim Associate Director of Art and Technology for the Culture, Art and Technology program at UCSD and a researcher at the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, CalIT2 and the UCSD School of Medicine. Cárdenas also worked in the Experimental Game Lab at the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts on the Scalable City project.

Education

Cárdenas earned her PhD at the University of Southern California in the Media Arts and Practice program where she was a Provost Fellow. She received her MFA at the University of California, San Diego in the summer of 2009, and holds a Master's degree in Media and Communications with distinction from the European Graduate School and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Florida International University.

External links

• Cardenas' Blog
• Cardenas' curated exhibitions at UCSD's Culture, Art and Technology Program