DJ Lotu5

dj lotu5 (Micha Cárdenas) is a transgender performance and new media artist and theorist. She is a researcher at the Experimental Game Lab at CRCA and at CalIT2. Her work deals with the interplay of technology, gender, sex and biopolitics. She currently lives and works in San Diego and Tijuana.
Artwork
Recent projects include Becoming Dragon, a 365 hour mixed reality performance in Second Life and the Transborder Immigrant Tool, a collaboration with Ricardo Dominguez and Brett Stalbaum to distribute cheap GPS devices to people about to cross the US/Mexico border.
The Australian performance artist Stelarc said the following about Becoming Dragon in an article in the San Diego Union Tribune:

"The realm of the Post-Human may not reside in the realm of bodies and machines, but in the realm of autonomous, intelligent entities sustained in electronic media,” said Stelarc, a 62-year-old Australian performance artist who is one of Cardenas' inspirations and collaborators.
“Perhaps we need not conceptualize RL (real life) and SL (Second Life) as separate and opposing realms. SL is a second skin. SL extends our bodily boundaries. Virtual experiences are RL experiences. Micha's extended period of immersion in SL enhances RL and actualizes SL as an alternate operational system, one that allows us to perform beyond the boundaries of our skin and beyond the local space that we inhabit."

Having spent a number of years working on media activism , Micha is a founding member of a number of art/activism collectives including radioActive sanDiego, Sharing Is Sexy, the borderlands Hacklab and the City Heights Free Skool. Micha recently joined the Lui Velazquez space in Tijuana as a curator and collective member. She taught a class at UCSD on Collective Art Practice as part of her MFA research on collaborative practices.
Education
Micha is an MFA candidate at the University of California San Diego who will be graduating in the summer of 2009. Micha holds a Master's degree in Media and Communications with distinction from the European Graduate School and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Florida International University.
Exhibitions
Micha's performances, videos and collaborations have been seen in galleries, community spaces and public spaces around the world including the Los Angeles Convention Center at Supersonic 2009, the Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum in Alexandria, Egypt, The University of Texas at Dallas, El Centro Cultural de Tijuana (CECUT), the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Artivistic 2007 in Montreal, Eyebeam NYC and the Gallery@Calit2, the US/Mexico border checkpoint during the Political Equator II, The Art and Social Space Laboratory at the Central Bank Museum of Ecuador, The Gallery Project in Ann Arbor, the Marcuse Gallery at UCSD, the Steinmatte at the European Graduate School, the Rubber Rose Gallery, The Voz Alta Project, freEtech 2007, the Casa de Iniciativas in Málaga, Spain, the Americas Social Forum in Quito, Ecuador and the Seoul Human Rights festival as well as on Free Speech TV and Paper Tiger TV.
Curated Exhibitons
*Intimate Simulations, group show, Tijuana, BC, Mexico
*[http://www.mail-archive.com/spectre@mikrolisten.de/msg04203.html panroc, Acamonchi solo show, Tijuana, BC, Mexico]
Selected Bibliography
*
*A Warcry for Birthing Synthetic Worlds at augmentology.com,,
*[http://spiedl.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prognormal&idPSISDG007238000001723807000001&idtypecvips&gifsyes Becoming Dragon paper presented at the Society of Photonic Imaging Engineers Electronic Imaging Conference in San Jose, California, 2009]
*Transgender Christmas, San Diego Reader
*Arse Electronica, San Diego Reader
Awards
*
*Ars Virtua Land Sponsorship
Free Software Project Contributions
Micha was also an official developer for the Debian project and began the packages which eventually became the graphical installer for Debian.

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