Abstract
As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, art that aims to actively challenge the social order continues to spark controversy and encounter resistance. 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. Dominquez has called the phones, which feature an audio application that plays inspirational poetry to migrants, a “mobile Statue of Liberty.”
