Digital Disturbances, Then and Now | RicArdo Dominguez RESIDENCY

November 11, 2019 | 5:30 PM | Workshop | Working Classroom

November 12, 2019 | 5:30 & 6:00 | Reception & Artist Talk | UNM ARTSLab

The disturbances created by Electronic Disturbance Theater 1.0 (EDT) in the 1990’s were bound to the aesthetics of radical transparency as part of a wide area investigation of electronic civil disobedience. After 9/11 EDT 2.0’s disturbance gestures shifted their research into the use of radical translucency as part of the core of their project the Transborder Immigrant Tool. Why did we pursue this critical form of aesthetics and how did it express itself in theory and practice. Ricardo Dominguez co-founder of EDT 1.0 and 2.0 will consider the above questions in relation to his work with Critical Art Ensemble in 1980’s and Digital Zapatismo in the 1990, as well as, current questions around the undocumented, refugees and transborder aesthetics. 

Workshop: What is artivism? Or how can one build on the histories of the avant-garde, tactical media, community activism and current forms speculative design to develop simple disturbance works. Gestures that activate and support the poetics of community actions from the roots. And watch the apple fall up, as the Zapatistas like to sing! 

The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) 1.0, was the art group who developed Virtual-Sit-In technologies in 1998 in solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0  project with Brett Stabaum, micha cardenas, Amy Sara Carroll , and Elle Mehrmand, the Transborder Immigrant Tool: https://tbt.tome.press/ (a GPS cellphone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/U.S border) was the winner of the“Transnational Communities Award” (2008), this award was funded by  and handed out by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico), also funded by CALIT2 and two Transborder Awards from the UCSD Center for the Humanities. Transborder Immigrant Tool was exhibited at 2010 California Biennial (OCMA), ZKM (2016), as well as a number of other venues, the project was also under investigation by the U.S. Congress in 2009/10, and was also reviewed by right-wing pundit Glenn Beck in 2010 (Fox News) as a gesture that potentially “dissolved” the U.S. border with its poetry. He was also also a member of Critical Art Ensemble in the 1980’s and was co-founder of the *particle group* and and founded b.a.n.g. lab at CALIT2 (California Information and Technology 2), trans-disciplinary research institute at UCSD since 2004. Ricardo was also a Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University (2017-18) and a Rockefeller Art & Humanities Fellow (Bellagio, Italy) in 2018. He is an associate professor in the Visual Arts at University of California, San Diego (UCSD).

Ricardo Dominguez's residency at the University of New Mexico is a collaborative project of Performance in the Peripheries and ARTSLab. The program is made possible with the generous support of the Department of Theatre and Dance and Bella Roma.