Mixed Relations | Technesexual - Mixed Reality Live Audio Performances and Workshops with Elle Mehrmand and Micha Cardenas :: October 2 (Performance @ Entijuanarte at the Centro Cultural de Tijuana (CECUT), October 4 (Performance @ Arse Elektronika X, in San Francisco), and October 15-16 (Workshop @ TURN*ON, Montreal).

Technesexual uses DIY biometric sensors that were made by hand to create live audio which will be heard in real space and virtual space at the same time. It is a Mixed Reality performance exploring relationality between people and between people and technology.

Entijuanarte 09 at CECUT - *entijuanarte* es una plataforma artística y cultural que busca alentar la exposición, promoción y venta de arte contemporáneo de artistas nacionales y extranjeros, individuales y colectivos. Su convocatoria incluye disciplinas y medios diversos como pintura, escultura, fotografía, dibujo, grabado, medios digitales, instalación y performance. Este año, en su quinta edición, entijuanarte 09, refrenda su compromiso y expande el papel que su presencia, ha ido conformando con las pasadas ediciones dentro del escenario artístico, y cultural regional y nacional.

Arse Elektronika - Of Intercourse and Intracourse = Sexuality, Genetics, Biotech, Wetware, Body mods=Scottish SF author Iain Banks created a fictitious group-civilisation called “Culture” in his eponymous narrative. The vast majority of humanoid people in the “Culture” are born with greatly altered glands housed within their central nervous systems, who secrete - on command - mood- and sensory-appreciation-altering compounds into the person’s bloodstream. Additionally many inhabitants have subtly altered reproductive organs - and control over the associated nerves - to enhance sexual pleasure. Ovulation is at will in the female, and a fetus up to a certain stage may be re-absorbed, aborted, or held at a static point in its development; again, as willed. Also, a viral change from one sex into the other, is possible. And there is a convention that each person should give birth to one child in their lives. It may sound strange, but Banks states that a society in which it is so easy to change sex will rapidly find out if it is treating one gender better than the other. Pressure for change within society would presumably build up until some form of sexual equality and hence numerical parity will be established. Does this set-up sound too futuristic? Too utopian? Too bizarre?

Artivistic 2009 - TURN*ON - The world to come is so sexy. We are unstoppable for we are fueled with an incredible urge to embrace the pleasure provided by difference, exchange and liberation. Our actions today are charged with an energy that is animated by the rise of change and a movement that is simply irresistible. For its upcoming fourth edition, Artivistic is going sexy. From October 15 to 17, 2009, we invite participants to discuss, question, and imagine the proxemics of sexuality, technology and politics. While keeping issues of power and control in question, we want to turn to the potency of pleasure, curiosity, humor, and desire in order to TURN*ON that which has yet to be thought and experienced differently.

CONTACT: Micha Cardenas, 619-750-8851, azdelslade [at] gmail.com; Elle Mehrmand, 714-287-2237, ellemehrmand [at] gmail.com