Zach Blas and micha cárdenas
“Virus | Viral: Queer and Trans Contaminations”

Zach Blas and micha cárdenas will collaboratively perform a hybrid of theoretical inquiry and artistic praxis, exhibiting and discussing a variety of projects and practices in relation with varying queer, transgender, and feminist conceptions of the virus, including viral media, aesthetics, affect, race, borders, and globalization.

cárdenas will discuss, among other works, virus.circus, a collaboration with Elle Mehrmand. virus.circus is an episodic series of performances exploring a speculative world of queer futures of latex sexuality and DIY medicine in resistance to virus hysteria. The project considers the tensions between histories of queer politics of HIV and the present transnational politics of viruses such as H1N1 in order to unearth the racialization of medical rhetoric, microscopic migration and global inequity.

Blas will explore queer readings of the relations between the virus and viral, alongside art projects Queer Technologies (2007–2012), which centers on critiquing the heteronormative underpinnings of technological architectures, design, and functionality by re-imaging a technology designed for queer use, and Facial Weaponization Suite (2011–2014), a series of masks designed to evade biometric facial recognition technologies.