[spectre] The Coming Disturbance at MIX NYC, November 15th

[micha cárdenas]

The Coming Disturbance
MIX 25
curated by Zach Blas and Micha Cárdenas

Trailer: http://vimeo.com/52119174
WEB: http://mixnyc.org/mix/programs/disturbance

>From The Coming Insurrection to The Coming Community, it is clear that
something, or someone, is coming. As neoliberal capitalism continues
to collapse, new movements spring up daily, from the plazas of Madrid,
Mexico, Wall Street, and Quebec, to reject austerity capitalism and
its attempts to shut down both hope and dissent. These coming forms of
resistance against emerging mutations of capital will be speculative,
nanobiotechnological, and digitally global.unrecognizable as they
exceed our current understanding of the political and the economic.
These will be bodies of all kinds which have been considered monstrous
and now emerge as erotic and empowered. While some theorists have
declared the death of Queer Theory, we see hope in the claims of an
emerging Queer 2.0, even while we reject that binary formation. Ours
is a Queer X.X, where the X.X can refer to an abstract number, any
number.or, it can refer to the post-porn movement, to the chromosomes
of engineered creatures and organs, to the longitude and latitude of
queer lives outside grids of western epistemologies, to the
multiplicitous disturbances queer brings globally. The artists curated
in this program reimagine resistance in forms which cause disturbance,
by unnerving, decentering, and unraveling power rather than
acknowledging its solidity by trying to destroy it. These artists
respond to the rigidity of contemporary life with gooey, embodied,
networked, and highly technical means of imagining other possibilities
for life.
Zach Blas & Micha Cárdenas, guest curators.

Total Running Time: 76 min.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

CHECK OUT THE REST OF MIX NYC's PROGRAMS HERE:
http://mixnyc.org/mix/programs

MIX 25 - NOVEMBER 13-18

Don't forget, MIX is known for magical spatial transformations (hint:
this year's theme involves cocooning and hammocks!), incredible
installation art (which you can read about here:
http://mixnyc.org/mix/installations), and a vibrant lounge space
populated by queer filmmakers, curators, artists, and, well, fabulous
hotties. Plan to HANG OUT BEFORE OR AFTER THE SHOW, enjoy a beverage
and some good company!

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

PROGRAM INFORMATION:

wikiabmeyad
Elle Mehrmand
2011, USA, video, color, sound, 7 min. NY Premiere
wikiabmeyad analyzes diasporic anxiety through sonic ritual. The
holographic clone sings wikileaks cables about Iran in Farsi, English,
and Perz-ish [a faux-liminal language].

Fag Face and the Facial Weaponization Suite
Zach Blas
2012, USA, video, color, sound, 9 min. NY Premiere
The Facial Weaponization Suite is a response to scientific studies
that link determining sexual orientation through facial recognition
and a burgeoning culture of technologically-driven identification
calculation. The suite provides sets of masks for public intervention.
One mask, The Fag Face Mask, is generated from the biometric facial
data of many gay men’s faces, attempting to evade detection by
mechanisms of capture and recognition-control.

Microdances_2.1: Minimal Body
Jaime del Val
2005, Spain, video, color, sound, 10 min.
The second film of the series Microdances, Minimal Body is a series of
minimalist sequences of moving body fragments, an exploration of
unknown landscapes and possible languages, an approach to the body
that redraws its territories and hierarchies, an exploration of the
process of looking into the body and feeling the body, fragmented,
multiple, amplified.

Speculative Biologies
Pinar Yoldas
2012, Turkey/USA, video, color, sound, 2 min., NY Premiere
This video introduces synthetic organs, perverse anatomies, and sexual
excesses to interrogate the cultural perception of sex.

En un Fist Fast
Rocio Boliver / La Congelada de Uva
2012, Mexico, video, color, sound, 2 min.
Abjection builds awareness of post-porn power, which breaks away from
the outdated distinction between eroticism and pornography.

Living Viral Tattoos
Tagny Duff
2008, Canada, video, color, sound, 6 min. NY Premiere
This video features the development of eight living viral tattoos,
sculptural protoypes grown in a petri dish (in vitro). A series of
“bruises” are rendered on pig and human skin by viral vectors and
immunohistochemical stains.

Nano-Garage(s)
*particle group*
2010, USA, video, color, sound, 16 min. NY Premiere
In her introduction to Tactical Media, Rita Raley underscores the
peculiar temporal ambitions of new media, its commitment to
"'temporary consensual zones,'" the "Next Five Minutes." Her
accompanying thesis: new media privileges disruption (the tactical)
over revolution (the strategic), resulting in a "politics [that] are a
metapolitics." Nano-Garage(s) works from the premise that poetic play
(signifyin'), as low-fi interruption, has the potential to integrate
the circuits, to (respectfully) challenge Raley's distinction.

UKI [performance documentation excerpts]
Shu Lea Cheang
2012, Taiwan/France, video, color, sound, 11 min.
UKI, a sequel to Cheang’s cyberpunk sci-fi movie I.K.U (2000, premiere
Sundance Film Festival), is structured as both a viral performance
"live code live spam" and a viral game in two levels: infect a city
and enter the bionet.

La Pinchajarawis
Giuseppe Campuzano
2011, Peru, video, color, sound, 2 min. World Premiere
La Pinchajarawis is as manifesto. The body as memory, and its chant as
transmuting technology.

Find Each Other :: Local Autonomy Networks
Micha Cárdenas
2012, USA, video, color, sound, 5 min. World Premiere
Local Autonomy Networks (Autonets) is inspired by an urge to create
technologies to facilitate communication for community-based,
anti-racist, prison-abolitionist responses to gendered violence,
creating networked fashion to reimagine social organization.

Hotel
Jordan Crandall
2010, USA, video, color, sound, 6 min.
The erotic dance has now become uni-directional—a vector aimed at the
body substrate, probing the very limits of the flesh. But in this
ambiguous space of extreme intimacy, there is no longer any coherent
identity to be captured.


-- 
micha cárdenas
PhD Student, Media Arts and Practice, University of Southern California
Provost Fellow, University of Southern California

New Directions Scholar, USC Center for Feminist Research

MFA, Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego

Author, The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities,
http://amzn.to/x8iJcY

blog: http://transreal.org