Poetic Operations

In Poetic Operations artist and theorist micha câardenas considers contemporary digital media, artwork, and poetry in order to articulate trans of color strategies of safety and survival. Drawing on decolonial theory, women of color feminism, media theory, and queer of color critique, caáIp1(Brdenas 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, câardenas identifies how trans and gender nonconforming 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 Monâae's music videos, and her own artistic practice, câardenas shows how algorithmic analysis provides new modes of understanding the complex processes of identity and oppression and the intersection of gender, sexuality, and race--