[({ })] Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT) by Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab is a last mile safety device designed to aid the disoriented of any nationality in a desert biome. The project’s interactive platform was developed and tested in Southern California’s Anza-Borrego Desert State Park from 2009 to 2012. Its code, included in this volume, is executable when and if one adds the coordinates of functional water caches to its poetic program. Its poetry, another executable code included here, comprises TBT’s desert survival series.
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Much of the written material featured in this Tome Gesture first appeared in a limited edition artist’s book:
Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab. [({ })] The Desert Survival Series/La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto. Ann Arbor: Office of Net Assessment/University of Michigan Digital Environments Cluster Publishing Series, 2014.
This bilingual volume––published under a Creative Commons license––was never intended for purchase. Instead, we hoped it would be as open as a mind or a border; as free as the code and the poetry that double-helix TBT. The English-Spanish compilation was re/distributed online in full in the following venues, where it remains available:
“The Transborder Immigrant Tool/La herramienta transfronteriza para inmigrantes.” Blueshift Series, CTHEORY (2015). https://ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=744.
“The Transborder Immigrant Tool/La herramienta transfronteriza para inmigrantes.” Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture (University of Victoria). CTheory Books: Blueshift Series. 2015. https://pactac.net/ctheory-books/blueshift-series/the-transborder-immigrant-toolla-herramienta-transfronteriza-para-inmigrantes.
“Transborder Immigrant Tool.” Electronic Literature Collection Volume 3, edited by ELC3 Collective: Stephanie Boluk, Leonardo Flores, Jacob Garbe, and Anastasia Salter. 2016. https://collection.eliterature.org/3/work.html?work=transborder-immigrant-tool.
“De la ecopoética y los medios dislocativos.” CONACULTA/Centro de Cultura Digital Editorial. May 18, 2016. https://editorial.centroculturadigital.mx/es/publicacion/de-la-ecopoetica-y-los-medios-dislocativos.html.
“La herramienta transfronteriza para inmigrantes.” CONACULTA/Centro de Cultura Digital Editorial. May 23, 2016. https://editorial.centroculturadigital.mx/es/descargable/la-herramienta-transfronteriza-para-inmigrantes.html.
“La herramienta transfronteriza para inmigrantes.” (interview with Amy Sara Carroll and Ricardo Dominguez by Lorena Gómez Mostajo, Mónica Nepote, and Ximena Atristain). CONACULTA/Centro de Cultura Digital Editorial. July 5, 2016. https://editorial.centroculturadigital.mx/articulo/la-herramienta-transfronteriza-para-inmigrantes.
“Transborder Immigrant Tool Series: Poetry Built for Survival on the U.S.- Mexico Border (Multimedia).” Truthdig. 2016 – 2017. https://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/transborder_immigrant_tool_series_poetry_survival_us_mexico_border_20160808.
Several of the poems in English and Spanish were featured alongside an interview with Amy Sara Carroll by Elizabeth Barrios and Mary Renda in Tiresias: Culture, Politics and Critical Theory 6 (October 2014): 2-26; 133-151.
Just “us,” broadly defined: in this Tome Gesture, the poems appear for the first time in Nahuatl and Ayuujk/Mixe, two indigenous languages of the Americas. The poems are accessible as sound files in all four idioms. Documentary footage by filmmaker Bryce Newell and video & photography by Brett Stalbaum are also included here. And, we reflect on the linguistic proximity of the terms “gesture” and “justice.”
No Walls, No Borders, No Immigrant Bans!
Ni muros, ni fronteras, ni prohibiciones de inmigrantes!
Yon tlatzauctli, yon tlaixconcanahya, yon techcotonazceh tlen tequitih cualli!
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Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab: Micha Cárdenas, Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez, Elle Mehrmand, and Brett Stalbaum
The Transborder Immigrant Tool: A Short History: Ricardo Dominguez
Computer code: Walkingtools Laboratory (Brett Stalbaum and Jason Najarro)
On Gesture: Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab
On Gesture––Spanish Translation: Rocío Pichon-Rivière
On Gesture––Nahuatl Translation: Martín Vega Olmedo
Introduction | Choreographic Tactics in the US-Mexican Borderlands: Ashley Ferro-Murray
Introduction | Choreographic Tactics in the US-Mexican Borderlands––Spanish Translation: Rocío Pichon-Rivière
Introduction | Choreographic Tactics in the US-Mexican Borderlands––Nahuatl Translation: Martín Vega Olmedo and Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz
Of Ecopoetics and Dislocative Media: Amy Sara Carroll
Of Ecopoetics and Dislocative Media––Spanish Translation: Natasha Hakimi Zapata
Of Ecopoetics and Dislocative Media––Nahuatl Translation: Martín Vega Olmedo and Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz
The Desert Survival Series Poems: Amy Sara Carroll
The Desert Survival Series Poems ––Spanish Translations: Francheska Alers-Rojas, Julieta Aranda, Elizabeth Barrios, Amy Sara Carroll, Iván Chaar-López, Orquídea Morales, Omar Pimienta, and Mary Renda
The Desert Survival Series Poems––Nahuatl Translations & Recordings: Martín Vega Olmedo and Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz
The Desert Survival Series Poems––Ayuujk/Mixe Translations & Recordings: Luis Balbuena Gómez
Displacement Here, Displacement Now: Raúl Zurita, the [({ })] Transborder Immigrant Tool, and Amy Sara Carroll’s The Desert Survival Series: Sergio Delgado Moya
Displacement Here, Displacement Now: Raúl Zurita, the [({ })] Transborder Immigrant Tool, and Amy Sara Carroll’s The Desert Survival Series––Spanish Translation: Sergio Delgado Moya
Displacement Here, Displacement Now: Raúl Zurita, the [({ })] Transborder Immigrant Tool, and Amy Sara Carroll’s The Desert Survival Series––Nahuatl Translation: Martín Vega Olmedo and Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz
Photographs & Videos: Brett Stalbaum
The Tinaja Trail & The Transborder Immigrant Tool Documentary: Bryce Newell
Print Book Design: Parisa Ghaderi
ONA Series Coordinators: John Cheney-Lippold and Tung-Hui Hu
Managing Editor of HemiPress: Olivia Michiko Gagnon
Tome Design and Development: TypeFold
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Mil gracias to the members of the University of Michigan’s Rackham graduate student and faculty interdisciplinary workshop—the Border Collective—for their unflagging commitment to collaboration; to Paula Poole for her desert and design wisdoms; to Water Station and Border Angels for their humanitarian efforts; to John Cheney-Lippold, Parisa Ghaderi, and Wendy Sung for their critically creative coordination of the poetry and code’s print publication; to Bonnie Applebeet, Larry La Fountain-Stokes, and Kristy Rawson for their Spanish and English proofreading; to Ashley Ferro-Murray, Bryce Newell, Martín Vega Olmedo, Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz, and Luis Balbuena Gómez for listening, filming, translating, and writing; to the many people who lent their voices to this Tome Gesture’s sound files; to the University of Michigan’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and its Director Alexandra Minna Stern for funding the Nahuatl translation of the poems; to the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University for funding the Nahuatl translation of “Displacement Here, Displacement Now”; to the University of California, San Diego’s Department of Visual Arts and CALIT2 for funding the Ayuujk/Mixe translations; to the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics for funding and coordinating additional miscellaneous translations; to Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, Stephanie Boluk, Leonardo Flores, Jacob Garbe, Anastasia Salter, Mónica Nepote, Lorena Gómez Mostajo, Ximena Atristain, and Truthdig’s “Arts and Culture” section editors for their participation in this project as a digital publishing experiment. Finally, many thanks to the Hemi, its Founding Director Diana Taylor and Managing Director Marcial Godoy-Anativia, HemiPress and its Managing Editor Olivia Michiko Gagnon, and Typefold and its web designer Lex Taylor, for this extraordinary new digital environment for materials from and related to TBT.