Dispositivos Poéticos: Ricardo Domínguez y el Transborder Immigrant Tool

Abstract

This essay analyzes the Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT), a cell phone that was modified to receive GPS signals and emit poetic phrases. Ricardo Domínguez created it in order to aid immigrants cross the border and added artistic content made up of American, Chicano and Mexican elements that reference landscape paintings as well as land and performance art. The essay also demonstrates that new media and mainstream art are not as far apart as they may seem, since the TBT combines elements from both in order to banish national borders. When used to enter the US, the device gives low-income individuals access to technology, thus minimizing the digital divide, which replicates, in a sense, the division created by the U.S.-Mexican border. Additionally, the TBT operates as a post-colonial object, since it also recognizes immigrants’ hybrid condition and their potential contribution in yet to be explored territories. The importance of this hybrid device is not only linked to its potential to help people, but is also due to the political and legal controversy it caused, which forced Americans to confront their ideas regarding tolerance and human rights. Thus, the device allows one to cross the border, and more importantly, questions this barrier through the use of locative technology and heterogenous cultural references.

Keywords

• u.s.
• border
• localization technology
• mexico
• migration
• ricardo domínguez
• transborder immigrant tool