Guest Curated by Chelsea Thompto
This exhibition has been curated around the ideas found in the Transcode Manifesto by Chelsea Thompto. The works were curated into the exhibition for the variety of ways they enact the ideas outlined in the manifesto. The artists included in the show are:
micha cárdenas
Anaïs Duplan
Everest Pipkin
Chris E. Vargas
Transcode work examines code as a base material in culture’s generation of meaning and narrative. The “code” of Transcode refers to: “a system of signals or symbols for communication,” as well as “a system of principles,” and “instructions for a computer.” Transcode work then, is an interruption of and traversal between codes. An effort in placing oneself at the sites of meaning making, exposing the codes (structures, processes, laws) which undergird supposedly inherent truths (of gender, of ownership, of land).
By seating work in this space, Transcode opts out of and interrogates the drive towards linear, binary, and static logic, offering a means of imagining otherwise the categorizations and narratives put forth by these logics onto fluid subjects.
This exhibition ran concurrently at Unrequited Leisure for the month of September, and also included a space at New Art City which opened September 18. Additionally, the works in this exhibition are hosted on sites around the internet. As such, this site serves as a point of connection between these various spaces enacting trans practice by facilitating the viewer’s migration across and through various web spaces.