The current historical moment sees the unelected Trump administration directing unprecedented levels of violence and discrimination towards Muslims, LGBTQ people, black people, women, disabled people and many more groups. Yet even before Trump's election, 2016 was the deadliest year for trans* people in the US. In many ways, the current moment extends the violence of cis-heteropatriarchy, settler colonialism and anti-blackness. In this talk, micha cárdenas will discuss the strategies used in her artwork to reduce violence and increase health for marginalized groups. By centering trans women of color and gender non-conforming people of color, cárdenas proposes, one can learn a great deal about how to respond to the global challenges of racial and gender violence. cárdenas has theorized these strategies as a trans of color poetics, a poetics of life and death that uses media and performance to respond to the ongoing necropolitical reality, in which governments maintain sovereignty through the promise of life for certain groups and the guarantee of death for other groups. cárdenas' recent projects include #stronger, promoting health for trans and gender non-conforming people through digital technology and #boundariesproject, which makes cybersecurity techniques more accessible to people affected by violence today. These recent projects have been developed in cárdenas' lab at the University of Washington Bothell, the Poetic Operations Collaborative.

micha cárdenas, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences and Interactive Media Design at the University of Washington Bothell, where she directs the Poetic Operations Collaborative, a design research lab using inclusive design for social change. cárdenas is an artist/theorist who works at the intersections of gender, race and technology. Her book in progress, Poetic Operations, uses practice-based research to develop strategies for using media to reduce violence against trans women of color. cárdenas’s co-authored books The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities (2012) and Trans Desire / Affective Cyborgs (2010) were published by Atropos Press. She is the winner of the 2016 Creative Award from the Gender Justice League. cárdenas was the recipient of the inaugural James Tiptree Jr. fellowshipin 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. She is a first generation Colombian American.