Jamming the Works: Art, Politics and Activism: Introduction

• Published in: Radical teacher (Cambridge) no. 100; p. 1
• Main Authors: Dittmar, Linda, Entin, Joseph
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Brooklyn Center for Critical Education of NY 01-10-2014
• Subjects: Artists; Carpenter, Karen; Cellular telephones; Children; Chinese languages; Design; French literature; Immigrants; Jarry, Alfred (1873-1907); Mexican Americans; Mobile phones; Photography; Political activism; Political Power; Politics; School Buildings; Software; Teaching; New York; United States > US
• EISSN: 1941-0832
• ISSN: 0191-4847

In one recent instance, the University of California at San Diego threatened to revoke the tenure of Ricardo Dominguez, a professor of visual art, who developed what he calls "transborder immigrant tools"- recycled cell phones loaded with GPS software that point border-crossers to caches of fresh water in the desert. Recall Hitler's and Stalin's repression of the international modernist avant-garde, Lawrence Ferlingheti's arrest and trial on obscenity charges for selling Alan Ginsberg's Howl, the National Endowment for the Arts' scandals of the early 1990s, or Chinese artists' imprisonment for making art that pointed at state corruption accountable for the death of many children trapped in shoddy school buildings during the 2008 earthquake in Schezuan.