March 30, 2013 Queens Museum of Art Sara Carroll and Ricardo Dominguez, two artists in the The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) collective, explore the development and usage of The Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT), a GPS cellphone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/U.S. border. Arte Útil Lab co-curator Adrianne Koteen introduces this work in light of the concept and criteria of Arte Útil. The TBT technology, developed to augment low cost cell phones which include a free GPS applet, provides poetry and a simple navigation system that leads immigrants to water caches left by the Water Station Inc., Border Angels, Quaker help centers, and geographic locations of highways and other landmarks used for navigating and surviving border crossing. In 2010 the artists of EDT/b.a.n.g. lab were investigated by three Republican Congressmen, the FBI Office of Cybercrimes and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where Ricardo Dominguez is an associate professor in the visual arts department, for misusing public funds and promoting illegal activities. All investigations were eventually dropped and UCSD did not find any misuse of funds. About the Project The Customs and Border Protection Agency’s 2009 fiscal year report documents 416 border-crossing related deaths from January to October 2009. When the Berlin Wall fell, official reports claimed that ninety-eight people in total died trying to cross from East to West Berlin. In contrast, local and international nongovernmental organizations estimate that 10,000 people to date have perished attempting to cross the Mexico-U.S. border. The Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT) repurposes inexpensive used mobile phones that have GPS antennae. The project represents a multi-valenced code-switch, a queer technology. Its software aspires to guide “the tired, the poor,” the dehydrated-citizens of the world-to water safety sites. Concomitantly, its platform offers poetic audio “sustenance.” Incapable of resolving the long histories of fear, prejudice and misunderstanding on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border, TBT remembers the often overlapping traditions of transcendental and nature writing, earthworks, conceptual art, performance, border art, locative media, and visual and concrete poetries. It learns equally from the efforts of humanitarian aid organizations like the Border Angels and Water Station, Inc. “Poetry in motion,” TBT navigates the borderlands of G.P.S. as a “global positioning system” and what, in another context, Laura Borràs Castanyer and Juan B. Gutiérrez slyly misread as a “global poetic system.” The Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT) was developed by Electronic Disturbance Theater/b.a.n.g. lab in 2007 by artists Micha Cárdenas, Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez, Elle Mehrmand and Brett Stalbaum in conjunction with CALIT2/Visual Arts Department/University of California, San Diego/Program in American Culture, Latina/o Studies/English Department/University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. About the Presenting Artists Amy Sara Carroll is Assistant Professor of American Culture / Latino / a Studies and English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She received a Ph.D. in Literature from Duke University (2004), and an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Cornell University (1995). Her research, teaching, and writing interests include Latino/a American contemporary cultural production (performance, art, video, and literature), feminist, queer, and postcolonial theory, visual culture, cultural studies, inter-American studies, border studies, and critical creative writing. Her poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies such as Talisman, Carolina Quarterly, The Iowa Review, Mandorla, Chain, Bombay Gin, Seneca Review, Borderlands, Faultline, This Bridge We Call Home, and Not For Mothers Only: Contemporary Poets on Child-Getting and Child-Rearing. She has exhibited poem-prints at the Audre Lorde Project (Brooklyn, New York), Duke University Museum of Art, Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center (Auburn, New York), and State-of-the-Art Gallery (Ithaca, New York). She is the author of two collections of poetry, SECESSION (Hyperbole Books, 2012) and FANNIE + FREDDIE/The Sentimentality of Post-9/11 Pornography (Fordham University Press, 2013). Since 2008, she has been a member of EDT 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab, coproducing the Transborder Immigrant Tool, which was included in the 2010 California Bien

• published: 05 Apr 2013
• views: 80

March 30, 2013 Queens Museum of Art Sara Carroll and Ricardo Dominguez, two artists in the The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) collective, explore the development and usage of The Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT), a GPS cellphone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/U.S. border. Arte Útil Lab co-curator Adrianne Koteen introduces this work in light of the concept and criteria of Arte Útil. The TBT technology, developed to augment low cost cell phones which include a free GPS applet, provides poetry and a simple navigation system that leads immigrants to water caches left by the Water Station Inc., Border Angels, Quaker help centers, and geographic locations of highways and other landmarks used for navigating and surviving border crossing. In 2010 the artists of EDT/b.a.n.g. lab were investigated by three Republican Congressmen, the FBI Office of Cybercrimes and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where Ricardo Dominguez is an associate professor in the visual arts department, for misusing public funds and promoting illegal activities. All investigations were eventually dropped and UCSD did not find any misuse of funds. About the Project The Customs and Border Protection Agency’s 2009 fiscal year report documents 416 border-crossing related deaths from January to October 2009. When the Berlin Wall fell, official reports claimed that ninety-eight people in total died trying to cross from East to West Berlin. In contrast, local and international nongovernmental organizations estimate that 10,000 people to date have perished attempting to cross the Mexico-U.S. border. The Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT) repurposes inexpensive used mobile phones that have GPS antennae. The project represents a multi-valenced code-switch, a queer technology. Its software aspires to guide “the tired, the poor,” the dehydrated-citizens of the world-to water safety sites. Concomitantly, its platform offers poetic audio “sustenance.” Incapable of resolving the long histories of fear, prejudice and misunderstanding on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border, TBT remembers the often overlapping traditions of transcendental and nature writing, earthworks, conceptual art, performance, border art, locative media, and visual and concrete poetries. It learns equally from the efforts of humanitarian aid organizations like the Border Angels and Water Station, Inc. “Poetry in motion,” TBT navigates the borderlands of G.P.S. as a “global positioning system” and what, in another context, Laura Borràs Castanyer and Juan B. Gutiérrez slyly misread as a “global poetic system.” The Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT) was developed by Electronic Disturbance Theater/b.a.n.g. lab in 2007 by artists Micha Cárdenas, Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez, Elle Mehrmand and Brett Stalbaum in conjunction with CALIT2/Visual Arts Department/University of California, San Diego/Program in American Culture, Latina/o Studies/English Department/University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. About the Presenting Artists Amy Sara Carroll is Assistant Professor of American Culture / Latino / a Studies and English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She received a Ph.D. in Literature from Duke University (2004), and an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Cornell University (1995). Her research, teaching, and writing interests include Latino/a American contemporary cultural production (performance, art, video, and literature), feminist, queer, and postcolonial theory, visual culture, cultural studies, inter-American studies, border studies, and critical creative writing. Her poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies such as Talisman, Carolina Quarterly, The Iowa Review, Mandorla, Chain, Bombay Gin, Seneca Review, Borderlands, Faultline, This Bridge We Call Home, and Not For Mothers Only: Contemporary Poets on Child-Getting and Child-Rearing. She has exhibited poem-prints at the Audre Lorde Project (Brooklyn, New York), Duke University Museum of Art, Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center (Auburn, New York), and State-of-the-Art Gallery (Ithaca, New York). She is the author of two collections of poetry, SECESSION (Hyperbole Books, 2012) and FANNIE + FREDDIE/The Sentimentality of Post-9/11 Pornography (Fordham University Press, 2013). Since 2008, she has been a member of EDT 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab, coproducing the Transborder Immigrant Tool, which was included in the 2010 California Bien

• published: 05 Apr 2013
• views: 80