Transborder Immigrant Tool: Poetry Built for Survival on the US-Mexico Border Truthdig
go to original September 26, 2016

The Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT) is a GPS cellphone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/U.S. border which 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.

The first poem in "The Desert Survival Series" read by Amy Sara Caroll in English and Ricardo Dominguez in Spanish:

The 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. It repurposes inexpensive used mobile phones that have GPS antennae and its software aspires to guide “the tired, the poor,” the dehydrated-citizens of the world-to water safety sites as well as offers poetic audio “sustenance.”

...Poet Amy Sara Caroll wrote a series of 24 poems titled “The Desert Survival Series/La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto” uploaded onto cell phones equipped with simple compasses and interfaces. Each poem is a form of lyrical advice that providers readers and listeners with tools for every hour of a day spent in the pernicious borderlands between the U.S. and Mexico. Truthdig will publish each of these poems in both Spanish and English over the next few weeks in the Poetry section, accompanied with bilingual audio recordings by various contributors to the project. For more information on the project, watch the video presentation below.

Read the rest at Truthdig

Related: Transborder Immigrant Tool Series: How to Wait Out the ‘Temper Tantrum’ of a Sandstorm (Truthdig)

Related: Transborder Immigrant Tool Series: Desert Fruits ‘Dethorned, Dethroned,’ Can Be ‘Delectably Edible’ (Truthdig)

Image: GPSMuseum.eu

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