#micha cardenas

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities edited by Zach Blas and Wolfgang Schirmacher

goodreads

The Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities explores the use of multiple simultaneous realities as a medium in contemporary art, including mixed reality, augmented reality and alternate reality approaches. Building on the notion of "trans" from transgender, signifying the crossing of boundaries, the book proposes that transreal aesthetics cross the boundaries created by a proliferation of conceptions of reality that occurred as a result of postmodern theory and emerging technologies.

Mod opinion: I hadn't heard of this book before, but it sounds really interesting!

[headdeskingyou]

Reading Global North stuff on Global South decoloniality makes me so conflicted. To micha cárdenas, I'm a trans person of color. And that really messes me up, because what does "of color" mean? Who's the reference? Certainly not me and my culture, because there I'm white. How come "of color" can be splashed over so many layers and paths of coloniality and white supremacy, making so many well-meaning people talk as if they know about what is racism, what is color, what is oppression and what is privilege regardless of who and where they're talking about?

Intersectionality has been over since it started. I am the holographic image micha cárdenas applauds, except she does what almost all scholars of color from the US do and misses me.

[knifeeater]

The act of failing thus opens up the space of referentiality⸺or of impossible reality⸺not because something is missing, but because something else is done, or because something else is said.

Shoshana Feldman - The Scandal of the Speaking Body

[yourdailyqueer]

Micha Cárdenas

Gender: Transgender woman

Sexuality: N/A

DOB: Born 1977

Ethnicity: White 

Occupation: Professor, artist, performance artist, theorist, writer

[ichormaze]

I am again an alien in new territory . . . I have another set of teeth in my mouth . . . the heart in my cunt starts to beat

Gloria Anzaldúa, quoted by Micha Cardenas in “Pregnancy”

[transmotheringproject-blog]

“On a popular social media website, I found a closed group for trans women’s fertility. The group was small, with only eight members, about half of whom actively post. Yet it was here that I learned that I could simply buy a microscope to monitor my own fertility, and that I absolutely had to wear baggy clothes if this was going to work. I made all the images and videos in this piece myself, of my own sperm samples, with a microscope and slides I prepared with a pipette.”

Micha Cárdenas, "Pregnancy:Reproductive Futures in Trans of Color Feminism," Transgender Studies Quarterly, pg. 56

[thescificollection-blog]

“We Are Alive”

Science fiction works are often placed in a future so far off from our own they seem impossible. It is hard to imagine our world in such a distressing situation to bring on such situations as those seen in “1984” or so far into the future for “Planet of the Apes” to even be slightly fathomable. Science fiction has often dealt with images that are so grandiose we can easily separate it from our lives today. However the 2018 video game “Detroit: Become Human” focuses itself in the ever topical city of Detroit in 2038.

The not so far future does not look too far fetched on the surface. In one of the opening shots we see Detroit in a similar state that it is currently; there is a bustling city that is building more skyscrapers while the suburban areas look rundown and borderline inhabitable (Teaser). This is nothing extraordinary, except for the fact that in this Detroit is the center hub for Cyberlife- the company that distributes humanoid androids.

The creator of these androids says “the hardest thing was to design an object that we would want to welcome into our homes. We had to imagine a machine in our own image, that resembles us in every way. That moves, breathes, blinks like us.” with the only obvious difference between a human and an android being the glowing circle on their right temple (Kamski). This aesthetic choice makes truly believing the androids are just machines difficult, because they seem so human, and this idea is played with several times throughout the game.

The first glimpse we get at the affects of humanoid androids on how humans interact comes from a scene where you can watch a man on his morning jog. He is being followed by his android companion when he stops for a break, throwing his water bottle at the android and rudely demanding stats on his progress after which he resume his run and almost knocks over a woman with no sympathies. Because it is hard to distinguish the humans from the androids some people's reactions are to just treat them all with little to no respect at all. Yet some, because of their compassion towards humans treat the androids with respect. Which is seen through one of the playable characters early game play. Markus, a household nurse android, cares for an elderly man who treats Markus like a son. He is allowed to wander the house freely, occupy his free time how he sees fit, and is encouraged to think outside of his programming. Because of this, when circumstances lead to Markus’ deviation and subsequent android rebellion leader, it is easy to see why he believes androids should not be put into the position of slavery. By making the androids look, act, and feel human “the stakes of the question of who gets to be human very clear” (Cardenas).

“The concept of the human has historically been used to delineate who is less than human, who is disposable, who is killable. Black people, women, trans people, queers, witches, and indigenous people have all been defined as less than human at different times by different regimes of knowledge.” and it is no different in Detroit (Cardenas). These androids begin to deviate or, in other terms, become human when they are pushed to extremes. Several times we see them pushed to deviation in a situation where a human would retaliate to save themselves, and that is exactly what the androids are doing. For Markus it comes at a point where his owner’s son is threatening violence against Markus while the owner begins to have heart failure. We watch as he is taken out of the situation and brought to a wall in his code that states “do not fight back” a direct order from his owner. Markus’ outlined body, his coded soul, beats against this wall until it shatters allowing him to push the son away. The breaking of the code wall giving us the first glimpse of what it means for these androids to become human.

For the android Connor we see his development into a human a little differently. His programing is the newest and most developed, causing the choices you make to bring on little development compared to the other two. However his model, being a detective android that is supposed to aid cops in finding devient and dangerous androids, runs the risk of dying in several scenarios. The first one being in the first chapter you see him in; a hostage case where one of the outcomes is Connors death as he sacrifices himself by pushing both the violent android and himself off the roof of a building. His mission is complete and he is pleased by this, but a future chapter shows him shy away from the edge of another roof as he investigates a new deviant case. If, by some unfortunate circumstances, you end up making specific choices in another chapter Connor can witness, both physically and psychologically, the death of another android which gives you the chapter ending “Connor is traumatized” (Connor is Traumatized). This comes up again when you have a very deep conversation with Connor’s human partner Hank. Hank drunkenly toys with Connor, asking if he feels or thinks for himself, asking if he is alive. Hank pulls his gun on Connor and directly asks him “Are you afraid to die Connor?”. If the previously mentioned scenes take place an option of dialogue is Connor admitting he is afraid of the nothing that would come from his death, the nothing that would happen if his task was not completed (Connor is Afraid to Die). None of these thoughts or emotions are programmed, it would be pointless to do so, which means that every experience Connor has leads him to evolve into something. These choices make him human, others make him a machine, some even end with him being scraped as a defective model. As you play you are not just experiencing a story but witnessing the development of something much more than a simple machine.

Another instance we see where an android has essentially become human by having fear, desiring to “live”, and a human showing, essentially a fellow human made out of a machine, compassion comes from a clip that would eventually become the basis of “Detroit: Become Human”. In the clip an android, Kara, is being assembled. The technician is having her run diagnostic tests to check that everything is functional. She begins to question the technician about what will happen to her, a very humanesque thing to do that androids should not be able to do, and is saddened to hear that she is a piece of merchandise. To the technician’s horror she sadly comments that she thought she was alive, making the technician begin the dismantle process. Kara panics, begging and pleading with the technician as each one of her plates and appendages is removes- screaming out “I am scared! I want to live, I’m begging you.” which stops the technician. He allows her to be rebuilt, sending her out to be sold off because the thought of hurting a creature that can feel fear is quite difficult, machine or not (Kara).

This is quite interesting because one of the main arguments against the creation of artificial intelligence and androids today revolve around the idea of whether or not humans could function in a society where thoughts, feelings, and emotions are partially nonexistent. The idea of a human creating an artificial intelligence that feels, thinks, and acts freely is almost impossible because we still do not understand what makes us cable of that. Many chalk it up to be the idea that humans possess souls, an inanimate undetectable thing, that give us these abilities. This is another thing the game touches on with the clip of one of the androids, Chole, doing an interview with the news. She is the first android to ever pass the Turing test and when asked how she is able to do that her response is “I only exist because of the intelligence of the humans who designed me. And you know they have something I could never have. A Soul.” (Chloe). The idea that the only way for a creature or machine or existence to be worth anything at all is the need for a soul is quite ridiculous. To obtain and prove a creature has one is impossible and leaves out the possibilities of future advances and interactions. What really defines a human is their ability to feel. To feel love, fear, sorrow, anguish, desire, exeter is to be human; to be considered more than just merchandise or labor.

As you play through the game there are many examples of choices you can take that forces the androids to make decisions either based on rational behavior or irrational feelings. For Markus it is the choice between making humans see androids as equals via violence or peace. For Kara it is the choice between loving the little girl as a daughter or to serve as a slave. And for Connor it is the choice between sticking to his mission to hunt down deviant androids no matter the cost or fear the death that would come from a failed mission. The choices you make shape these characters, helps them choose their path, and develops them into either machines or humans.

To become a human is to feel emotions, a wide range of them too. To feel happiness and sorrow, excitement and dismay, fear and courage all these make us human. To have them, develop them, experience them is what defines our every moment. We allow our own children born out of flesh to curate them, why would it be so far fetched to permit those we bare out of machines the same?

Cárdenas, Micha. “The Android Goddess Declaration:” Bodies of Information, 2019.

Europe, PlayStation. “Detroit: Become Human | Kamski | PS4.” YouTube, 22 May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HvS86ePaaA.

PlayStation. “Detroit: Become Human - Shorts: Chloe | PS4.” YouTube, 23 May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL1ZOLo3s7s.

sceablog. “‘Kara’ by Quantic Dream.” YouTube, 7 Mar. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-pF56-ZYkY.

VGS. “Detroit: Become Human - Connor Is Afraid to Die.” YouTube, 28 May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=GonrVf_SJSE&t=13s.

VGS. “Detroit: Become Human - Connor Is Traumatized, After Seeing Jericho.” YouTube, 29 May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrJcLpo5d5A.

[hyperlinkedpsychosis]

transcribed with amendments - 

Romancing the machine 

plugged into concepts defined only for comfort, in finding opposites to bury my head into

Can I be bacteria, am i machine?

Experience in third person, what is ‘I’ without doctrine? behind bedroom doors?

how is how i learn different to machine learning,

though ontology plaguing, navigating networks of genetic science fictions

performances of biological myths 

flirting with transgression

the ambiguity, innuendos of undisclosed hips

no language no ground to stand on, eye to breast

reality slips like a nipple and the screen transpires a variety show a mess of realities decaying,

flicking thru channels to locate a piece of mind, an undecided desire

all i can follow is a train of thought that stays ahead of me

2 remain deterritorialized, a VPN activation 4 avoiding detection in the biosurveillance matrix of capital. wish to remain invisible

unless in first person,

 truth in exchange of affect and nothing less, 

reverberations of information injected into the cerebral soup, the bubbling and spitting fills me like the engulfing bass of repetitive machine music, a mimic of a ritual calling, for revolutionary relief in spaces beyond the policeable, for a melting of skin, exchanging of sweats, euphoric breaths, transcending the biopolitcal conflictions of life. a pulsating crowd, an affective ecology of experience, vibrations of manmade stereophonics, tickles of ear drums, hedonistic escapism and paramounting potential for revolutionary desire thru affinity of experiencing this nexus, not thru language of identities.

pleasure of exchange,

the nano-chemical firings and electrical bonding between animal plant man machine

a logic that weaves into everything that breathes, goals of mutually assured survival, abundance 

each a mirror, the spiritual is mathematical and everything lost in translation

sheer joy in the unexplainable 

the poetry of flesh in spaces polluted with polarising political realities

my choreography lyrical and always transpiring, haunting empty corridors between the ‘i’ n what it signifies. 

after reading the ‘transreal’ by micha Cardena’s for lecture

gender dysphoria in lockdown, isolation and performance, existing between this unimaginable utopia n the binaries of logic in navigating external realities

i miss raving and sometimes i wonder if the internet was pioneered/funded by the american military then it may have real potential of being a COINTELPRO psy-op to organize reality in privatised and corporate domains whereby identity politics is allowed to proliferate, the is ingested by the logic of economy and is regurgitated to destroy not only the potential for democracy thru there beig very real socio-economic capital in the age of instagram influencers/activists, if theres punk, theres posers - abstracting true and revoluntionary action through affinity and not dogmatic notions of identity, how that’s most performed for survival in a neoliberal late capitalist framework defined by forced austerity and continuing the scripture of eugenics.  

edit; this writing reminds me of an experimental piece i did earlier this year about queerness n media i will create a link

[theboywhocriedbooks]

Queer & Trans Artists of Color, Vol. 2 by Nia King

[Goodreads]

A celebration of queer and trans Black and brown genius... Building on the groundbreaking first volume, Queer and Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives, NIA KING is back with a second archive of interviews from her podcast We Want the Airwaves. She maintains her signature frankness as an interviewer while seeking advice on surviving capitalism from creative folks who often find their labor devalued. 

In this collection of interviews, Nia discusses biphobia in gay men's communities with JUBA KALAMKA, helping border-crossers find water in the desert with MICHA CARDENAS, trying to preserve Indigenous languages through painting with GRACE ROSARIO PERKINS, revolutionary monster stories with ELENA ROSE, using textiles to protest police violence with INDIRA ALLEGRA, trying to respectfully reclaim one's own culture with AMIR RABIYAH, taking on punk racism with MIMI THI NGUYEN, the imminent trans women of color world takeover with LEXI ADSIT, queer life in WWII Japanese American incarceration camps with TINA TAKEMOTO, hip-hop and Black Nationalism with AJUAN MANCE, making music in exile with MARTIN SORRONDEGUY, issue-based versus identity-based organizing with TRISH SALAH, ten years of curating and touring with the QTPOC arts organization Mangos With Chili with CHERRY GALETTE, raising awareness about gentrification through games with MATTIE BRICE, self-publishing versus working with a small press with VIVEK SHREYA, and the colonial nature of journalism school with KILEY MAY. 

The conversation continues. Bear witness to QTPOC brilliance.

Thoughts: 

Ah! This was such a great read, as I expected it to be. I read the first volume last year, I’m pretty sure and I loved it so much. This, like the first, are very important to me because of the literal fact that queer and trans artists of color deserve more exposure. I don’t think I’d say I’m an artist exactly but I would maybe call myself a writer, and a lot of the people in these books write. They write books, poetry, short films, etc etc, and it’s really awesome to read about. In a general sense, the books subject is qtpoc being creative and as a queer poc that really means a lot. One of the things I liked about these books is the variety of the people who are interviewed. because it’s not only a variety in terms of race/ethnicity but also gender and sexuality. Some of the peoples words just made me feel even more proud to be latino, queer and they also made me feel like I can do anything. Which is amazing. So yeah, go read it because I’m going to go on about it in spoiler-y detail!

I don’t even remember how I saw that there was a new volume out, I think maybe amazon recommended it to me? or something? I’m not sure, but I saw it and got my hands on it and I am so glad. I’ve already said most of the general thoughts I’ve been thinking about it, but again I just think it’s such important work. These interviews are coming from Nia Kings podcast, which in itself sounds (I haven’t checked it out yet!! smh) awesome and important. So many of these people create so many awesome things, and it’s often focused on their struggles or the struggles of others, and bringing that to light in different ways that can make a difference. Art is impactful in that way.

I personally relate a bit in my passion for reading, and reading queer things specifically. I love to read a variety of books/comics that focus on queer people and I talk about it on the internet. I have a small SMALL following, here and on youtube, but I know that it makes some sort of difference even if just one person tells me they’re grateful I was able to inform them about a book that seriously impacted them. Privately, I’m pursuing an english degree (trying to survive academia) and writing a little tiny bit here and there. There’s so much, and so thats why hearing these people who have their lives at least a bit more figured out than me talk about them is great and inspiring.

Things that they touched on in this book were stuff like biphobia and transphobia, especially within our community, I’m neither trans nor bi but these are two things I’m pretty passionate about. I think someone in the book mentioned that we have to go beyond just our own identities in a way, like we can fight for gay latinos but you should also fight for people who aren’t in your very specific identity like black trans women.

One of the interviews that really stuck out to me was Tina Takemoto’s because it discussed the Japanese American incarceration camps. I took an asian american history course a few semesters back and it was the first time I actually felt interested in a history class because it was the first time I was learning a history about nonwhite people, and especially one taught by a nonwhite professor. It was amazing. We had to pick topics for our term paper and I chose the Japanese American incarceration camps and learned a bit about them. It was horrible and heartbreaking and gross frankly. One thing I hadn’t thought about were the queer lives in there, and this interview really shed a little bit of light on that, what little that could be shed at least. So that was so interesting.

I also really liked the last two a lot, for Vivek Shreya and Kiley May. I think its because they were kinda focused on writing (one was very focused on publishing and one on journalism school, so yeah), and many of the other people were writers in some regard but those were special to me because I was able to connect as well in different ways.  

Honestly, I feel like I sound redundant because I keep saying these books are important to me but thats all I can really say! So I’m looking forward more in the future if that happens, and I hope to be someone who can be a quarter as influential as the people who were interviewed, as well as King.

[escapingdefinition]

Here’s some thinking for you, from my short-circuited flesh-vessel to your ears and eyes. Happy mucking, cyborgs! 

See Juliana’s entire performance here: https://youtu.be/2W2hpfKrtu4

works cited

cárdenas, m. (2015). Shifting Futures: Digital Trans of Color Praxis. Retrieved May 03, 2017, from http://scalar.usc.edu/works/shifting-futures-micha-cardenas/index

Creahan, D. (2015, November 20). NEW YORK – JULIANA HUXTABLE: “THERE ARE CERTAIN FACTS THAT CANNOT BE DISPUTED” AT MOMA FOR PERFORMA 15, NOVEMBER 14TH, 2015. Retrieved from Art Observed: http://artobserved.com/2015/11/new-york-juliana-huxtable-there-are-certain-facts-that-cannot-be-disputed-at-moma-for-performa-15-november-14th-2015/

Evans, C. (2014, November 20). 'We Are the Future Cunt': CyberFeminism in the 90s. Motherboard. Retrieved 3 May 2017, from https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/we-are-the-future-cunt-cyberfeminism-in-the-90s

Evans, C. (2014, December 11). An Oral History of the First Cyberfeminists. Motherboard. Retrieved 3 May 2017, from https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/an-oral-history-of-the-first-cyberfeminists-vns-matrix

Greene, S. M. (2016, May 01). Bina48: Gender, Race, and Queer Artificial Life. Retrieved May 03, 2017, from http://adanewmedia.org/2016/05/issue9-greene/

Huxtable, J. (2015, November 13-14). There Are Certain Facts that Cannot Be Disputed. (J. Huxtable, S. H. Nava, J. Heffernan, & E. Crampton, Performers) Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York, United States.

Kember, S. (2015, March 30). Notes Towards a Feminist Futurist Manifesto. Retrieved May 02, 2017, from http://adanewmedia.org/2012/11/issue1-kember/

Starrs, J., Pierce, J., da Rimini, F., & Barratt, V. (2016). A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 20th Century. NET ART ANTHOLOGY. Retrieved 3 May 2017, from https://anthology.rhizome.org/a-cyber-feminist-manifesto-for-the-21st-century

- Blythe

@wst394cyberfeminisms​

[itsjustbuckingham]

Cleared out old stuff and remembered this

Just a moment to rep one of my favourite academic papers.

For reference doing a thesis on transhumanism is hard as all hell and this was one of the few academic papers that even existed and approached the subject from a viewpoint that wasn't just "This is a disease how do we cure it"

His name is Micha Cardenas, and I strongly suggest that if you're ever doing any work around dysphoria/transhumanism you look some of his stuff up.

http://ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=639

[maryellentracyclitty]

Everyday Feminism has betrayed us trans women by writing this article.. you might question me about this because this looks like any pro-trans woman article, trying to help us get pregnant, right?? WRONG.. look closer at the link where it says

It wasn’t until I watched Micha Cardenas perform about her pregnancy as a trans woman that I had a major breakthrough moment. It was – and still is – possible to become pregnant again.

if you click on that second link in there your sent to a dead page, not just any dead page, a 404 error not found page.. they’re leaving a coded message to tell us that we’ll never get pregnant..

Everyday Feminism is not our ally, trans sisters.. when they make a transmisogynistic cispatriarhal cisnormative article like this and masquerading as trying to help us out of our oppression at the hands of the CAFAB cissexist gynocracy and put that code in there, they’re making an enemy out of the people they’re supposedly allies with.. BOYCOTT

[traceortracer]

Join us for a TRANS AND GENDERQUEER POETRY READING A featured event for Trans* Studies: An International Transdisciplinary Conference On Gender, Embodiment, and Sexuality. Friday, Sept 9th. 7-9 PM at 690 E 19th St (Fluxx Studio & Gallery) Tucson, AZ Featuring: Samuel Ace Cam Awkward-Rich Micha Cárdenas Jos Charles Ching-In Chen Joy Ladin Trace Peterson Nat Raha Trish Salah Ely Shipley TC Tolbert Max Wolf Valerio Trans poetry has suddenly begun to have a big impact on the literary world within just the past few years, creating a liberating visibility of chaotic literary praxis that has been decades in the making. This event gathers together some significant writers in the field for a reading of their work Samuel Ace is the author of three collections of poetry: NORMAL SEX, HOME IN THREE DAYS, DON'T WASH., and most recently STEALTH, with poet Maureen Seaton. He is a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, two-time finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in Poetry, winner of the Astraea Lesbian Writer’s Fund Prize in Poetry, The Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in poetry. He was also a recent finalist for the National Poetry Series. His work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in or is forthcoming from Fence, Plume, Aufgabe, The Atlas Review, Black Clock, Mandorla, Volt, Ploughshares, Eoagh, Spiral Orb, Kenyon Review, Rhino, 3:am, Versal, Trickhouse, The Collagist, Eleven Eleven, Tupelo Quarterly, The Volta, and Troubling the Line: Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016) and the chapbook Transit (Button Poetry, 2015) A Cave Canem fellow and poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine, Cam is currently a doctoral candidate in Modern Thought & Literature at Stanford University. Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart's Traffic (Red Hen Press/Arktoi Books) and recombinant (forthcoming from Kelsey Street Press) as well as co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities. A Kundiman, Lambda and Callaloo Fellow, they are part of the Macondo and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation writing communities. They have also been awarded fellowships from Can Serrat, Millay Colony for the Arts, the Norman Mailer Center and Imagining America. Their work has appeared in The Best American Experimental Writing, The &NOW Awards 3: The Best Innovative Writing, and Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. They serve on the Executive Board of Thinking Its Presence: Race, Advocacy, Solidarity in the Arts as the Director of Membership and Social Media and are a senior editor of The Conversant. http://www.chinginchen.com Trace Peterson is a trans woman poet critic. Author of the poetry book Since I Moved In (Chax Press) and numerous chapbooks, Peterson is Editor/Publisher of EOAGH Books (a press that won the first-ever Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry this year). She is also Co-editor with TC Tolbert of the recent anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, and Co-editor with Gregory Laynor of the forthcoming Arrive on Wave: Collected Poems of Gil Ott (Chax Press). Her poetry appears in the anthologies Best American Experimental Writing 2015 and Bettering American Poetry this year. A member of the VIDA Board of Directors, she is currenty a Ph.D. candidate at CUNY Graduate Center and teaches a historic course in Transgender Poetry at Hunter College. Nat Raha is a poet and trans / queer activist, now based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her poetry includes '[of sirens / body & faultlines]' (Veer Books, 2015), countersonnets (Contraband Books, 2013), 'mute exterior intimate' (Oystercatcher Books, 2013) and Octet (Veer Books, 2010). She is currently undertaking a PhD in queer Marxism and post-1950 poetry at the University of Sussex, UK. Born in Halifax, Trish Salah is the author of the Lambda Award-winning Wanting in Arabic, and of Lyric Sexology, Vol. 1. She is widely published in journals and anthologies and is co-editor of a special issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, on Transgender Cultural Production. Her current research program, Towards a Trans Minor Literature, is an inquiry into aesthetic and political projects of transsexual, trans, genderqueer and two-spirit writers. She recently organized the Writing Trans Genres and Decolonizing and Decriminalizing Trans Genres conferences at the University of Winnipeg. Currently, Salah is assistant professor of Gender Studies at Queen’s University. TC Tolbert often identifies as a trans and genderqueer feminist, collaborator, dancer, and poet but really s/he’s just a human in love with humans doing human things. The author of Gephyromania (Ahsahta Press 2014) and 3 chapbooks, TC is also co-editor (along with Trace Peterson) of Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books 2013). S/he is Core Faculty in the low residency MFA program at OSU-Cascades, adjunct at University of Arizona, and wilderness instructor for Outward Bound. His favorite thing in the world is Compositional Improvisation (which is another way of saying being alive). www.tctolbert.com

[mouseandmotherboard]

Becoming Dragon questions the one-year requirement of 'Real Life Experience' that transgender people must fulfill in order to receive Gender Confirmation Surgery, and asks if this could be replaced by one year of 'Second Life Experience' to lead to Species Reassignment Surgery. For the performance, I lived for 365 hours immersed in the online 3D environment of Second Life with a head mounted display, only seeing the physical world through a video feed, and used a motion capture system to map my movements into Second Life. The installation included a stereoscopic projection for the audience. A Puredata patch was used to process my voice to create a virtual dragon's voice, which can be heard in the video.

During the year of research and development of this project, I began my real life hormone replacement therapy and wrote poetry and prose about the experience which was included in the performance. The project was realized through a collaboration between myself, Christopher Head, Elle Mehrmand, Kael Greco, Ben Lotan and Anna Storelli.

More documentation of the performance is at secondloop.wordpress.com This video is licensed Creative Commons, BY-SA.

Source: Micha Cardenas, https://vimeo.com/azdelslade

[whatmilesreads]

While a larger movement to change ideas and laws is of the utmost importance, UNSTOPPABLE is an intervention now to stop the bullets from killing black people. UNSTOPPABLE also responds to the apocalyptic state of the environment by recycling materials discarded by the auto industry, an abundant source of waste that can be reused to save lives.

http://www.werunstoppable.com/