Document:Q16242

The Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT) is a Geo Poetic System embodied by a mobile application designed to assist migrants crossing the Mexico-U.S. border by providing them with essential survival information. Developed between 2007 and 2012, it repurposed low-cost GPS-enabled phones to guide users to water caches placed by humanitarian groups in the desert. Beyond navigation, TBT integrated poetry in English, Spanish, and Náhuatl, offering emotional support and reflecting on themes of survival, hope, and displacement.The tool aimed to address the dangers migrants face due to harsh desert conditions and restrictive border policies. Its functionality was simple, but its goals were deep: to challenge political control over borders and offer an alternative means of survival.

The project was seen as a form of performance art, or tactical poetics as proposed by Aria Dean, that makes space for it to act outside the art circuit. While political opposition and the growing influence of criminal organizations at the border prevented wide distribution, as well as worries about the GPS coordinates being co opted and used against individuals, TBT drew international attention, fueling debates on migration, class inequality, and the role of art in confronting urgent social issues. EDT 2.0 speculated about the creation of a potential life-saving device that also carries a critique of the conditions that force migrants into dangerous crossings, using technology and poetry as tools of resistance. This online version, designed by the digital studio territorio indefinido led by Ian Alan Paul, gathers TBT’s audio files and poems and is presented as a digital archive.