*Bits.Atoms.Neurons.Genes* Micro_Gestures at the Edge of Invisibility will be an On/Off line space for MFA artists in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD to explore and present works at the edge of invisibility, at the edge of the digital and biological, at the edge of micro-robotics and nano-art, from in-virtu to in-vivo works and back.
Gender in this film series curated by Lasse Lau is about the notion of the stylized and performed. What Jacques Lacan described as the mirror stage (le stade du miroir), the place where we are informed by the norm of the mirror, which becomes the core identification of the subject ontology. A body constantly changes character by moving between private and public, physical and virtual, performed and real. The subject relates to this fragmentation and disharmony through the reflection of the mirror, relating to what we are wearing; how we act and what we desire. The essential question then becomes - who am I in this world?
This Show is my Business by Mahmoud Khaled (EG): A film based on a meeting with Ozgen, a London based Turkish performer who has performed, taught, choreographed and directed for the last 14 years. His reputation as a male belly dancer and teacher has taken him across Europe. / English, Duration 16 min, 2008 /
From Shadow to Dust by Lasse Lau (DK): What would happen if a performer emasculated himself in front of an audience? The artists answer is depicted in this short spectacular take on one of the backbone ideas of psychoanalysis / Duration 1 min, 1998, No dialogue /
Solveig by Lars Erik Frank (DK) & Gitte Villesen (DK): Solveig, formerly known as Niels, used to live entirely as a macho man. Once in a while, mostly at night, Niels dressed up as a woman and sometimes went out for short walks in his neighborhood. Today Solveig struggles with the politics of being a woman. / Danish with English subtitles. Duration 20 min + 10 min, video installation, 2002 /
Gender Geography Tijuana by Felipe Zuniga (Mex): The body image - present and absent - in the social space where the emergence of elusive identities troubles and plays with traditional bionomic gender labels. The content of the interviews with Pan, Cris and Abby in juxtaposition with the visual documentation echoes the mobility of the region Tijuana-San Diego where even traditional or stereotypical rolls and values are put into question due to the cultural friction of bodies and stories coming back and forward, gaining and losing, trading signifiers in each crossing. / Spanish with English subtitles. Duration 12 min, 2007 /
Becoming Dragon by Micha Cardenas (US): Becoming Dragon questions the one-year requirement of ‘Real Life Experience’ that transgender people must fulfill in order to receive Gender Confirmation Surgery, and asks if this could be replaced by a one year period in the virtual environment of ‘Second Life’. For the performance, Micha Cardenas lived for 365 hours immersed in Second Life with a head mounted display, so that all she saw was Second Life and with a motion capture system to map her movements into Second Life. / English, Duration 5.5 minutes, 2009 /
Two Movies by Jessie by Gitte Villesen (DK): In this film Jessie tells of two different ideas she has for a short movie. One she had for a long time, another that she makes up on request. They both deal with the anger directed at, and the fear of the abnormal within society. They also deal with the strength to fight back and not to give up, no matter what the surroundings might say and do. / Danish with English subtitles, Duration 15 min, 2003 /
Bijli by Jaishri Abichandani (US): Bijli, is an accomplished performer from Pakistan who sought asylum under the grounds of her gender. The screening offers viewers the opportunity to experience an intimate and personal performance of a traditional folk song about love and longing. / Urdu. Duration 2.5 min, 2006 /
Story from the cover of the sunday morning edition of the San Diego Union Tribune:
Online-world immersion probes 'possibilities of transformation'
Immersion conversion
By Scott LaFee, staff writer
2:00 a.m. December 21, 2008
Micha Cardenas, a 31-year-old transgender art student at UCSD, spent 365 consecutive hours in the virtual world, Second Life. K.C. Alfred/Union-Tribune
Micha Cardenas is a 31-year-old man taking hormones to become a woman. So, it's not surprising perhaps that Cardenas views the boundaries of gender as being somewhat fluid and has questions about what it means to be male and/or female.
But what if the question isn't merely gender identity, but an issue of species? What if one felt wrongly trapped inside their human body, preferring instead to be a cat? Or a lizard? Or some sort of unknown alien life form?
“People are now undergoing all sorts of extreme body modifications,” said Cardenas, a visual arts student at UC San Diego. “They're getting scales tattooed all over their bodies, horns implanted on their heads, tongues forked. It seems crazy right now, but I wonder how far we are from actually being able to change species. And if we could, what would that be like?”
To find out, Cardenas recently spent 365 consecutive hours in Second Life, an Internet-based, three-dimensional virtual world where human users assume digitized alter egos called avatars of any gender or species, real and unreal.
The experience would be part academic requirement (it's her final project for a master's degree in visual arts), part social experiment and part performance art. It would be an artful investigation of “the possibilities of transformation offered by contemporary technology,” Cardenas explained. The principal investigator would be her avatar: a dragon named Azdel Slate.
Immersion conversion Cardenas sits in a chair in a darkened room: Visiting Artist Lab 1613 in Atkinson Hall at UCSD's Center for Research and Computing in the Arts, part of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology or Calit2. It took more than a year of hard work and planning to get here.
“I had very early contact with Micha, even before she was accepted in the visual arts department at UCSD,” said Ricardo Dominguez, an assistant professor and Cardenas' lead adviser. “We had a great many discussions about how her history in computer science, activism and sexual re-orientation could become core themes in the development of (her) artwork.”
We're a bit late on this story... but Visual Arts professor Ricardo Dominguez (in blue at left) had a unique experience in July, when he portrayed Cesar Chavez in a re-enactment of a landmark speech by the Chicano leader. It was the fourth event of the Port Huron Project, a series of re-enactments organized by artist Mark Tribe, part of Creative Time's 2008 public art initiative, "Democracy in America: The National Campaign". It was held in Exposition Park in South L.A., site of the original speech.
According to LosAngeles Times art critic Christopher Knight, "At the end of Dominguez's second performance of the Chavez speech, the crowd spontaneously erupted into a loud chant of "Si! Se puede! Si! Se puede!" Under the circumstances, it resonated as an Obama moment." Dominguez was also featured in a preview in the LA Times. The event was filmed and should be available shortly on YouTube and blip.tv. The program will also play on the MTV Jumbotron in New York's Times Square in mid-September.
An article by Sophie Le-Phat Ho reflects on the Transborder Immigrant Tool , an audacious and militant project developed by a group of artists from the electronic resistance movement out of the University of California's Calit2 Lab in San Diego...
abstract The Transborder Immigrant Tool is being developed at the Calit2 Lab of UCSD (University of California, San Diego) by a team of electronic disturbance artists composed of Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cárdenas and Jason Najarro . The project aims to reduce the number of deaths at the US/Mexico border by providing a device that migrants can use to locate resources, such as water caches and safety beacons, as well as situate themselves in the desert. The author explores the tool's intervention in bringing together questions of artistic value and humanitarian value in the current landscape of mobile and locative media art.
résumé Un groupe d'artistes de résistance électronique du Calit2 Lab à UCSD (University of California, San Diego), composé de Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cárdenas et Jason Najarro, développe en ce moment le “Transborder Immigrant Tool”. Ce projet vise à réduire le nombre de morts à la frontière mexico-américaine par le biais d'un appareil que les immigrants pourront utiliser afin de repérer des lieux sécuritaires ou de l'eau, ainsi que d'être en mesure de se situer eux-mêmes dans le désert. L'auteur explore l'intervention que l'outil provoque en rapprochant la question de la valeur artistique avec celle de la valeur humanitaire dans le paysage actuel de l'art médiatique mobile et locatif.
Children's Park Downtown San Diego, Across from the Convention Center
The Biotechnology Industry already has a huge presence in San Diego, but come June 17-20 they plan on taking over. Their international annual convention is being held at the downtown Convention Center on Harbor Dr. They will be discussing the usual BIO subjects: how to commodify the world's food production, genetically modify crops to disrupt sustainability, profit from human and non-human animal illnesses and torture, create weapons and the wars to sell their products, spin their unethical choices and buy public officials to fulfill their agenda. Sound like a good time? Well if you have $2300 I encourage you to attend and learn just how they plan to shape our world! But......
If you don't have that twenty-three hundred laying around to waste on watching scientists and capitalists patting themselves on the back speaking of ways to profit from the destruction of nature visit the free autonomous counter convention in the downtown Children's Park, across the street from the Convention Center, on Thursday, June 19th. Make your way to the trolley orange line and get off at the Convention Center stop (we don't need those pollutin' cars, besides theres no free parking downtown Thursdays anyhow!) From one p.m. to seven p.m. you can enjoy the SD weather outside with the community while enjoying free hot meals provided by Food Not Bombs, share free goods or skills during the Really (really!) Free Market, learn about and embrace a sustainable future at one of the multiple workshops taking place throughout the day and network with the groups in San Diego that are working to make that future possible.
1PM Free Lunch and Share at the Free Market
2-4PM Workshops! Urban and Guerilla Gardening, Biological Weapons, Alternative Energy, Animal Testing, Collective Practice and Womyn's Health
4PM Microbiologist Mike Copass speaks about the risks of genetic manipulation and the corporate industry that profits from it.
5-7PM Entertainment and Games! Make some noise and let the Biotechies hear ya.
Dr. Cardenas 
http://www.cityheightsfreeskool.org