Program & Keynote – IR16 – 21-24 Oct 2015

Conference Program

The conference program is available online here. (A mobile version of the schedule is forthcoming. Stay tuned!)

Keynote Speaker

We are thrilled to announce that Micha Cárdenas will be delivering the opening keynote, entitled “Stitching Poetics: Networked Bodies and Algorithmic Identity.”

The abstract for her talk:

Despite recent legal gains for gay and lesbian couples, transgender people of color continue to be the number one target of murder among LGBT people in the US. How can the interaction between speculative media and social justice be understood, specifically in a context of the struggle for justice for trans women of color in the Americas? To do so, I propose the material/conceptual operation of the stitch to add to the operations of the cut and the fold as discussed by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska. I will discuss media art by Adam Harvey, Zach Blas and the Electronic Disturbance Theater, alongside a discussion of my own practice-based research project, Local Autonomy Networks. These examples are the basis for a comparison of the practice-based research methods of speculative design, contestational design and community-based design with the goal of creating media poetics that can reduce violence against trans people of color.

Welcome Banquet

On Thursday, October 22, evening, we will be holding a Welcome Banquet, with a light meal at the Desert Botanical Gardens, a 140 acre collection of arid flora from around the world, started in the 1930s by a Swedish botanist (naturally). For your listening and dancing pleasure, we will be joined by Gertie & the Boyz, a celebrated Waila band. While many associate mariachi music with the broader Sonora area – and rightfully so – Waila represents some of the crossroads of the southwest. It is closely associated with the Tohono O’odham people and draws from a wide range of influences.