she, her, her, hers, herself
Humanities Division
Associate Professor
Faculty
Department of Performance, Play & Design (PPD)
Feminist Studies Department
Digital Arts Research Center
233
DARC 233
By appointment
Humanities Academic Services
micha cárdenas, PhD, MFA, is an artist, and Associate Professor of Critical Race & Ethnic Studies and Performance, Play & Design, at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she directs the Critical Realities Studio. Her debut novel Atoms Never Touch (forthcoming October AK Press 2023) imagines trans latina love crossing multiple quantum realities. Her academic monograph Poetic Operations: Trans of Color Art in Digital Media (Duke UP 2022) was the co-winner of the Gloria Anzaldúa Book Prize in 2022 from the National Women’s Studies Association “for groundbreaking monographs in women’s studies that makes significant multicultural feminist contributions to women of color/transnational scholarship”. cárdenas was a winner of the 2022 Anonymous Was a Woman artist award. She is currently working on her next academic monograph After Man: Fires, Oceans and Androids, as well as The Probability Engine, a multi-disciplinary artwork imagining futures of climate justice. She is a first generation Colombian American.
cárdenas is an artist/theorist who was the winner of the 2020 Impact Award at the Indiecade Festival and the 2016 Creative Award from the Gender Justice League. She is a member of the artist collective Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0. Her artwork has been described as “a seminal milestone for artistic engagement in VR” by the Spike art journal in Berlin. She was the recipient of the inaugural Otherwise Fellowship in 2014, a fellowship to provide support and recognition for the new voices in science fiction who are making visible the forces that are changing our view of gender today. She has been described as one of “7 bio-artists who are transforming the fabric of life itself” by io9.com.
Her solo and collaborative artworks have been presented in museums, galleries, and biennials including the SUR Biennial (2023), Outfest Fusion (2023), Tangled Arts + Disability in Toronto (2022), Transmediale in Berlin (2021), the alt_cph Copenhagen Biennial (2020); the Stamps Gallery (2020) in Ann Arbor; the Thessaloniki Biennial (2019) in Greece; Arnolfini Gallery (2019); De La Warr Pavillion (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2018); House of Electronic Arts Basel (2018); Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen (2018); Henry Art Gallery (2017); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2011); Centro Cultural del Bosque, Mexico City (2015); the Zero1 Biennial, San Jose, CA (2012); and the California Biennial, Newport Beach, CA (2010).
Her co-authored book The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities (2012) was published by Atropos Press. cardenas’ poetry has appeared in the anthologies Troubling the Line, The &Now Awards 3, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves and Writing the Walls Down. She has published book chapters in Plants, Androids and Operators – A Post-Media Handbook, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, Queer Geographies, The Critical Digital Studies Reader and the Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader. Her articles have been published in Transgender Studies Quarterly, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, CTheory, the Media-N Journal, the Ada Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, and the AI & Society Journal, as well as the magazines Terremoto, No More Potlucks, Mute Magazine and Make/Shift Magazine.
cárdenas is an editor of Transgender Studies Quarterly, and has been on the editorial boards of Art Journal and Art Journal Open, and on the advisory boards of FemTechNet and the York University Center for Feminist Research. She holds a PhD from the University of Southern California, an MFA from University of California, San Diego, an MA in Communication from the European Graduate School and a BS in Computer Science from Florida International University.
Trans of color poetics, algorithmic analysis, transreal aesthetics, science fiction, climate justice, critical race and ethnic studies, environmental humanities, environmental art, decolonization, augmented reality, games as art and activism, practice-based research
Biennials
2023 SUR Biennial, "Mala Muerte / Bad Death", Torrance Art Museum, California
2020 alt_cph Copenhagen Biennial, Copenhagen and Online (Curated by the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology)
2019 Thessaloniki Biennial, Greece (performance, curated by Louisa Avgita, Domna Gounari, Panagis
Koutsokostas, Areti Leopoulou, Thodoris Markoglou, Thouli Misirloglou, Hercules Papaioannou, Eirini Papakonstantinou, Katerina Syroglou, Maria Tsantsanoglou, Syrago Tsiara)
2012 ZERO1 San Jose Biennial, San Jose, CA
2010 California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA (performance in collaboration with Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab, curated by Sarah Bancroft)
2009 Mérida Biennale: Arte Nuevo InteractivA '09, Museo de la Ciudad, Mérida, Mexico (exhibition in collaboration with Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab)
Solo Exhibitions/Performances
2017 Este Suelo Secreto (To Be Human Once More) and Pregnancy, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (Curated by Chris Vargas)
2014 Redshift and Portalmetal, Beyond the Page, Temple Contemporary, Philadelphia, PA (curated by Nicole Restraino)
Redshift and Portalmetal. Gender, Bodies, Technology Conference, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia (opening night keynote performance)
Collaborative Solo Shows
2023 "Oceanic, Portal", with Gerald Casel, Ian Costello, Anna Friz, Cynthia Ling Lee, Susana Ruiz, and Huy Truong, Leslie Lohman Museum, New York, NY (curated by Stamatina Gregory)
2016 "UNSTOPPABLE", with Patrisse Cullors, Edxie Betts and Chris Head, INCA Institute, Seattle, WA (curated by Aeron Bergman and Alejandra Salinas)
Books
Atoms Never Touch, AK Press, October 2023
Poetic Operations: Trans of Color Art in Digital Media, Duke University Press. March 2022.
micha cárdenas, Elle Mehrmand, Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez, Brian Holmes, James Morgan, Allucquére Rosanne Stone, Stelarc, The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities, New York: Atropos Press, 2012.
Selected Articles (in refereed Journals)
Jian Neo Chen, micha cárdenas; "Times to Come: Materializing Trans Times." TSQ 1 November 2019; 6 (4): 472–480. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-7771639
"Monstrous Children of Pregnant Androids: Latinx Futures After Orlando." Special Issue on Orlando Pulse Massacre. Gay and Lesbian Quarterly. GLQ (2018) 24 (1): 26-31.
"Imagining A Trans World", Special Issue on Ursula K. Le Guin. Ada Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology. 12. Alexis Lothian ed. http://adanewmedia.org/2017/11/issue12-cardenas/
“Trans of Color Poetics: Stitching Bodies, Concepts, and Algorithms.” Scholar and Feminist Online Journal, 13.3. 2016. http://sfonline.barnard.edu/traversing-technologies/micha-cardenastrans-of-color-poetics-stitching-bodies-concepts-and-algorithms/
“Pregnancy: Trans Latina Reproductive Futures.” Transgender Studies Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 1-2, Pp 48-57. 2016.
“Shifting Futures: Digital Trans of Color Praxis.” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology, No. 6. 2015. http://adanewmedia.org/2015/01/issue6-cardenas/
"Operation Faust y Furioso: A Trans [ ] Border Play on the Redistribution of the Sensible." with Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez, Elle Mehrmand and Brett Stalbaum, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Vol. 21 No 1, pp 28-42. 2015
“Local Autonomy Networks: Post-Digital Networks, Post-Corporate Communications.” Media-N Journal, CAA Conference Edition 2013, , http://median.newmediacaucus.org/caa-conferenceedition-2013/local-autonomy-networks-post-digital-networks-post-corporatecommunications/
“Imaginary Computational Systems: Queer Technologies and Transreal Aesthetics.” with Zach Blas, AI & Society, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp 559–566. 2013
“Blah, Blah, Blah: Ke$ha Feminism?” Journal of Popular Music Studies, Vol 24. No. 2, pp. 176-195. 2012.
Selected Articles in edited volumes
“The Android Goddess Declaration: After Man(ifestos)”, in Losh, E., and J. Wernimont. Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities. University of Minnesota Press, 2019.
“Decolonial Media Praxis: From Cinema to Network” in Keeling, K., and T. Soundararajan. From Third Cinema to Media Justice: Third World Majority and the Promise of Third Cinema. 2019. http://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/thirdworldmajority/index
"Dark Shimmers: The Rhythm of Necropolitical Affect." In Johanna Burton, Reina Gossett and Eric Stanley eds. Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility. MIT Press. December 2017.
“Queer OS: A User’s Manual.” with Zach Blas, Jacob Gaboury, Jessica Marie Johnson, Margaret Rhee and Fiona Barnett. In Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein eds. Debates in the Digital Humanities Vol. 2. University of Minnesota Press. 2016.
“Movements of Safety, A Safety Movement, Safety in Movement.” In C. Apprich, A. Iles, J. Berry Slater and O. Shultz eds. Plants, Androids and Operators: A Post-Media Lab Handbook, Mute Publishing. 2014.
“Becoming Dragon: A Transversal Technology Study.” In Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker eds. Critical Digital Studies Reader, 2nd Edition. University of Toronto Press. 2013. (Reprint)
Art Publications
"Reenvisioning Humanity." in Sabeth Buchmann, Isabelle Graw, Antonia Kölbl, Christian Liclair, Anna Sinofzik, and Beate Söntgen eds. Texte Zur Kunst Issue 131, September 2023.
“Local Autonomy Networks: Queer and Feminist Geographies of Violence." In L. Lau, M. Arsanios, F. Zuñiga-González, M. Kryger eds. Queer Geographies: Beirut, Tijuana, Copenhagen, pp. 110-117. Museet for Samtidskunst // Museum of Contemporary Art, 2014.
