Poetic Operations: Trans of Color Art in Digital Media

by Micha Cïrdenas

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478015031
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	03/25/2022
Series:	Asterisk
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d)

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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. Algorithmic Analysis  1
1. Trans of Color Poetics  26
2. The Decolonial Cut  43
3. The Shift  72
4. The Experience of Shifting  96
5. The Stitch  129
Conclusion. Visionary Trans of Color Futures  167
Notes  179
Bibliography  203
Index  213

Editorial Reviews

In this beautifully written book, micha cárdenas directs us to look at how the algorithm, as analytic and praxis, holds the possibility of trans of color survival. Deftly moving across numerous geographies, texts, and fields of inquiry, Poetic Operations is a bold contribution to trans of color studies.

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity - C. Riley Snorton

"Poetic Operations is arguably the first major academic work to deal with the subject matter in such detail. How cárdenas uses the term will likely become the standard by which other engagements with the term are measured.

Journal of Critical Race Inquiry - Sofie Vlaad

"Scholar-activists across fields stand to benefit from cárdenas’s contribution to trans and digital media studies, especially as Poetic Operations reminds us of the importance of listening to trans people of color as they share and organize around experiences of not only incomprehensible violence and subjugation, but also joy, connection, healing, and solidarity. "

E3W Review of Books - Sam Turner

Importantly, this book models theory developed from and for trans of color existence and models how scholars must critically reflect on how our theories have ramifications for people’s lives. . . . Poetic Operations provides methods for analysis and design that invite exciting and innovative projects that engage in decolonial trans of color survival and celebration.

Lateral - Shano (Hongyuan) Liang and Michael Anthony DeAnda

"The methods that cárdenas pioneers are not only compelling but worthy of commendation. . . . Poetic Operations reinvents our conceptions of algorithms in ways that pose potential breaks from this techno-history of modernity. As digital connectivity has helped engineer a new social panic about trans people, cárdenas deftly constructs a new algorithmic imaginary, one that contains possibilities for trans survival, expression, and justice."

GLQ - Michael Reinhard

"Poetic Operations is a clear, well-written, and creative first- and third-person account of trans of color existence in written, digital, and performed avenues of praxis. Ultimately, cárdenas provides a useful model of algorithms, exposing this tool as a survival method used by trans people for centuries and how it continues to prevent violence and provide safety and security for contemporary communities everywhere."

Women's Studies in Communication - Riana Slyter

micha cárdenas’s powerful new work extends intersectionality as a mode for understanding the relationships between race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and other axes of power, oppression, and resistance. Doing important theoretical and analytical work in its analysis of trans of color media arts practice, Poetic Operations will be useful for those working in media studies, digital studies, trans studies, and art history, as well as anyone interested in interrogating power.

Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need - Sasha Costanza-Chock

"cárdenas braids together theory, algorithmic analysis, and self-reflexive critique offering generous and candid expressions of her work as an artist-activist-scholar. ... Poetic Operations is an intuitive model for weaving theory and practice and exploring the generative slippages between thinking and doing."

Visual Studies - Treva Legassie

cárdenas explores digital media, speculative design and technology, performance and visual arts, coding, activism, theory, games, and poetry across the geographies of the Americas and beyond, along with a deep self-reflective engagement with her own practice-based projects. . . . Centering Black, Indigenous, Latinx trans and travesti voices, PoeticOperations offers critical approaches to deploy digital technologies for decolonial futures.

Nishant Upadhyayn Quarterly

“cárdenas explores digital media, speculative design and technology, performance and visual arts, coding, activism, theory, games, and poetry across the geographies of the Americas and beyond, along with a deep self-reflective engagement with her own practice-based projects. . . . Centering Black, Indigenous, Latinx trans and travesti voices, PoeticOperations offers critical approaches to deploy digital technologies for decolonial futures.

American Quarterly - Nishant Upadhyay

"Poetic Operations is a clear, well-written, and creative first- and third-person account of trans of color existence in written, digital, and performed avenues of praxis. Ultimately, cárdenas provides a useful model of algorithms, exposing this tool as a survival method used by trans people for centuries and how it continues to prevent violence and provide safety and security for contemporary communities everywhere."--Riana Slyter "Women's Studies in Communication" (1/23/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"cárdenas explores digital media, speculative design and technology, performance and visual arts, coding, activism, theory, games, and poetry across the geographies of the Americas and beyond, along with a deep self-reflective engagement with her own practice-based projects. . . . Centering Black, Indigenous, Latinx trans and travesti voices, PoeticOperations offers critical approaches to deploy digital technologies for decolonial futures."--Nishant Upadhyay "American Quarterly" (11/30/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"Importantly, this book models theory developed from and for trans of color existence and models how scholars must critically reflect on how our theories have ramifications for people's lives. . . . Poetic Operations provides methods for analysis and design that invite exciting and innovative projects that engage in decolonial trans of color survival and celebration."--Shano (Hongyuan) Liang and Michael Anthony DeAnda "Lateral" (12/21/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"Poetic Operations is arguably the first major academic work to deal with the subject matter in such detail. How cárdenas uses the term will likely become the standard by which other engagements with the term are measured."--Sofie Vlaad "Journal of Critical Race Inquiry" (7/5/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"micha cárdenas's powerful new work extends intersectionality as a mode for understanding the relationships between race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and other axes of power, oppression, and resistance. Doing important theoretical and analytical work in its analysis of trans of color media arts practice, Poetic Operations will be useful for those working in media studies, digital studies, trans studies, and art history, as well as anyone interested in interrogating power."--Sasha Costanza-Chock, author of "Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need"

"In this beautifully written book, micha cárdenas directs us to look at how the algorithm, as analytic and praxis, holds the possibility of trans of color survival. Deftly moving across numerous geographies, texts, and fields of inquiry, Poetic Operations is a bold contribution to trans of color studies."--C. Riley Snorton, author of "Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity"

From the Publisher