
The Transreal Book Party at ONE Archives
Thursday, April 5, 2012, 6pm-7:30pm
ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives
909 West Adams Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90007
ONE Archives is pleased to host a celebration for the release of The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities by Micha Cárdenas. The evening will feature an introduction by Jack Halberstam, followed by a reading from the book by Cárdenas. Wine and light refreshments will be served outside in the garden area. Please come and support this great publication!
The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities explores the use of multiple simultaneous realities as a medium in contemporary art, including mixed reality, augmented reality and alternate reality approaches. Building on the notion of “trans” from transgender, signifying the crossing of boundaries, the book proposes that transreal aesthetics cross the boundaries created by a proliferation of conceptions of reality that occurred as a result of postmodern theory and emerging technologies.
Proposing three operations for dealing with multiple realities, The Transreal discusses artists and art collectives including Blast Theory, mez breeze, Reza Negarestani, Ricardo Dominguez and Zach Blas. Through these artists’ work and Cárdenas’ own artwork, including Becoming Dragon and collaborations with Elle Mehrmand Becoming Transreal, technésexual and virus.circus, The Transreal demonstrates that transreal aesthetics have broad implications across new media, performance art and electronic literature. The book spans a wide range of genres including theoretical analyses of artworks, poetry, source code, photos of performances and wearable electronics, and discussions with leading thinkers in new media and performance art including Stelarc, Allucquére Rosanne Stone and Ricardo Dominguez.
More information on The Transreal and Cárdenas’ work can be found here.