Living Writers Series – Spring 2024

Imaginaries)Un(bound: Race, Justice, Writing: The Living Writers Series, the Center for Racial Justice, and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) present poets, theorists, fiction and hybrid artists working at the nexus of creative-critical practice in the struggle for justice with the imperative of imaginatively undoing the academic and disciplinary strictures that bind critical scholarship.

micha cárdenas, PhD, 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 book Poetic Operations, Duke University Press (2022), proposes algorithmic analysis to develop a trans of color poetics. Poetic Operations was the co-winner of the Gloria Anzaldúa Book Prize in 2022 from the National Women’s Studies Association. 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 a first generation Colombian American. Her solo and collaborative artworks have been presented in museums, galleries and biennials including the Thessaloniki Biennial in Greece, Arnolfini Gallery, De La Warr Pavilion in London, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Centro Cultural del Bosque in Mexico City, the Centro Cultural de Tijuana, the Zero1 Biennial and the California Biennial. Cárdenas is a member of the artist collective Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0; She posts updates on Mastodon at http://eldritch.cafe/@michacard