Artivists and Mobile Phones: The Transborder Immigrant Project
The folks at PopWuping recently linked to an article on the Transborder Immigrant Project, which recently received the Transnational Communities Award for their Transborder Immigrant Tool. The system uses GPS-enabled mobile phones to help immigrants crossing the border between Mexico and the United States.
MobileActive.org (who penned the article) conducted a conversation with the artist behind the tool, Ricardo Dominguez, which highlighted an important aspect of the ongoing debate about art as activism:
“There’s a long history of artists at the border creating gestures that question the very nature of the border,” said Ricardo. Because disturbance art is framed as art, and not as solely political activism, the “artivists” are given more leeway politically. “The reason they can’t stop us is that we always frame all these gestures within the poetic frame.” By framing politics as art, and art as inextricably linked to politics, projects like the Transborder Immigrant Tool are able to survive as both a life-saving device and an “artivist” concept.
