Trans Technology: Circuits of Culture, Self, Belonging, a group exhibition that challenges entrenched conceptions of gender and technology, is the currently featured exhibit in the Mabel Smith Douglass Library and is guest curated by Bryce J. Renninger and Christina Dunbar-Hester of Rutgers University. Artists featured in the exhibit include: Shana Agid, Stephanie Alarcón, Zach Blas, Micha Cárdenas, Heather Cassils, Zackary Drucker, Georgia Guthrie, Jacolby Satterwhite, and Sandy Stone; including two artist/activist groups- Genderchangers and the Barbie Liberation Organization (BLO). This exhibit is part of The Mary H. Dana Women Artist series.

Trans Technology focuses on technological art and artifacts that engage in trans, queer and feminist projects that help to trans (to use the word as a verb: spanning; interrogating; crossing; fusing) conceptions of the heterosexual matrix in technology. Furthermore, the exhibit addresses trans, queer and feminist studies and perspectives on technology, but in particular on the ways that transgender studies has approached (as Susan Stryker identifies it in the introduction to the Transgender Studies Reader) the recent “sea change in the academic study of gender, sex, sexuality, identity, desire, and embodiment.” Without focusing on artists of any particular gender identity, the objects in the exhibit are challenges to the heterosexual matrix and propose new gendered circuits of culture, self, and belonging. The exhibition will run through June 3, 2013.

A symposium with the same title as the exhibit featuring a ‘hacking’ demonstration, panel discussions and performances with artists, technologists and local academics will take place at the Alexander and Douglass Libraries on the Rutgers-New Brunswick campus on Tuesday, March 5th. Featured at Douglass library from 11am - 1:15pm will be a hacking workshop followed by lunch. At Alexander Library from 2pm – 5:30pm there will be two panel discussions/performances. The first discussion titled, “Interventions in Tech Industry and STEM” from 2:00 - 3:30pm will address actions taken and works produced from within and against the institutional technology industry and science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. The second discussion, “Utopian Technics” from 4:00 - 5:30pm will discuss ways that technology is used to imagine new ways of living and being. For more information please visit: iwa.rutgers.edu, contact womenart@rci.rutgers.edu or call 848-932-3726.

The Dana Women Artists Series is a program of the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art (IWA) in partnership with the Rutgers University Libraries. Founded in 1971 by Joan Snyder, The Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series is the oldest continuous running exhibition space in the United States dedicated to making visible the work of emerging and established contemporary women artists. Series co-sponsors include the Institute for Research on Women, Rutgers University Journalism & Media Studies Department, Rutgers University School of Communication & Information, GAIA Centers, IEEE History Center, and Rutgers University Libraries. In addition, this exhibit is in conjunction with the Institute for Research on Women’s (IRW) 2012-13 interdisplinary semenar, “Trans Studies: Beyond Hetero/Homo Normativities.”

The Women Artist Series Galleries are located in the Mabel Smith Douglass Library, 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 9am – 4:30pm and weekends by appointment. The galleries and symposium are free and open to the public.