Electronic Disturbance Theatre 2 0: “Gestures in the ‘Border Horror’ of US Immigration Policy”

“Gestures in the ‘Border Horror’ of US Immigration Policy”
In this hybrid presentation/ "Be the Media!" workshop, Ricardo Dominguez and Amy Sara Carroll of the collective Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0 discuss a brief history of the collective’s previous work in relation to borders; the relationship between NAFTA, US Prevention through Deterrence philosophy, the bi-national War on Drugs, and the emergence of border art as genre. The workshop is grounded with a discussion on “Technologies of Disturbance: From Tactical Media to Geo-Poetic Systems,” an overview of artivist gestures from the 1990s and what they might offer artivists and activists now. Then, together with Ricardo and Amy, Yes Man Mike Bonnano moderates a discussion with attendees brainstorming potential artivist and activist actions.
Presented by EMPAC and iEAR Presents
Curators: Ashley Ferro-Murray, Kathy High, Branda Miller
More about this event
Each decade of the twentieth century triggered draconian refinements of the “border horror” of U.S. immigration policy. Resulting borderization in the twenty-first century continues as such, now with blurred divides between the flow of goods and the blockage of human beings. Supply chain disruptions and queued shipping containers and the US invocation of Title 42 and “Stay in Mexico” policies, while never comparable, are in equal measure “products” of COVID-19.
Among others, the artists will reflect on the influences, production and distribution challenges, and discordant reception of the collective’s Transborder Immigrant Tool, a project that debuted fifteen years ago. This project consists of an app designed to provide sustenance in grueling desert conditions like those that abut the US-Mexico Border. The app consists of poetry and a navigational system that points users toward water sources provided by humanitarian aid organizations like Water Station Inc.
The talk includes a discussion of Carroll and Dominguez’s new work-in-progress theater production, “The Flight of the Palindrone.” This project instrumentalizes drone activity to provide a sonic theatrical intervention that plays on surveillance technologies in the Mexican-U.S. borderlands, the participation of the University of California, San Diego (the artists’ own institution) in the research and development of unmanned aerial vehicles, and regional eco-catastrophe-all within the context of Carroll and Dominguez’s continued commitment to translanguaging and the artivist gesture.
Sponsored by iEAR Presents!, EMPAC and the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Rensselaer, made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of The Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
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CREW
Steve Pierce: tech and house sound
Troy Pohl, Recorded Sound
Branda Miller, Director/Switcher
Cam 1- Dave Publow
Cam 2- Z Carroll-Dominguez
Cam 3- Annie Cass
Post-production edit- Annie Cass