Project R&D
Mica Cardenas: Trans of Color Poetics: Stitching Bodies, Concepts, Algorithms. S&F Online, Issue 13.3 -14.1 2016
Cardenas writes about her practice as a trans person of color (latinx) and through trans of color theory, aesthetics and experience. Her practice is interesting, working through social and algorithmic processes to envision practices of non-violence, to reduce violence. She addresses the research question “can I, as an artist, build networks of communication that can reduce the violence that queer and trans people of color experience?”. Ultimately she admits that her social process works do not necessarily translate into usable technologies in the real world – Autonets and the Transborder Immigrant Tool – due largely to limitations of DIY technologies. But her processes are really interesting: the cut and the stitch, dispersing and converging and signalling methods as algorithmic analysis. Her use of ‘flocking’ borrowed from dance choreography correlates, or at least brings to mind, swarm technologies in sound. She references a great group of theorists, Kara Keeling, Simone Brown, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Jessica Marie Johnson and the artists/game designer Mattie Brice, as the most interesting for me.