Poetic Operations: Trans of Color Art in Digital Media

In Poetic Operations artist and theorist micha cárdenas considers contemporary digital media, artwork, and poetry in order to articulate trans of color strategies for safety and survival. Drawing on decolonial theory, women of color feminism, media theory, and queer of color critique, cárdenas develops a method she calls algorithmic analysis. Understanding algorithms as sets of instructions designed to perform specific tasks (like a recipe), she breaks them into their component parts, called operations. By focusing on these operations, cárdenas identifies how trans and gender-non-conforming artists, especially artists of color, rewrite algorithms to counter violence and develop strategies for liberation. In her analyses of Giuseppe Campuzano's holographic art, Esdras Parra's and Kai Cheng Thom's poetry, Mattie Brice's digital games, Janelle Monáe's music videos, and her own artistic practice, cárdenas shows how algorithmic analysis provides new modes of understanding the complex processes of identity and oppression and the intersection of gender, sexuality, and race.

Author: Micha Cárdenas
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 03/25/2022
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.51d
ISBN13: 9781478017653
ISBN10: 1478017651
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | LGBTQ+ Studies | Transgender Studies
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | General
- Art | Digital

About the Author
micha cárdenas is Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Performance, Play and Design, and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, as well as coauthor of Trans Desire / Affective Cyborgs and The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities.