The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent

14. UCOP versus R. Dominguez: The FBI Interview. A One-Act Play à la Jean Genet

343 14 UCOP versus r. dominguez:The FBI Interview A One-Act Play á la Jean Genet Ricardo Dominguez Almost five years ago, Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab released the first iteration of the Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT), a mobile-phone technology that provides poetry to immigrants crossing the U.S.–Mexico border while leading them to water caches in the Southern California desert. In 2010, the project caused a firestorm of controversy on the American political scene, and the artists of EDT/b.a.n.g. lab were investigated by three Republican congressmen and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where Ricardo Dominguez, cofounder of EDT (with Brett Stalbaum) and principal investigator of b.a.n.g. lab, is an associate professor in the visual arts department. TBT was already under investigation starting on January 11, 2010, by UCSD (this included the entire group of artists working on it: Brett Stalbaum , Micha Cardenas, Dr. Amy Sara Carroll [University of Michigan], and Elle Mehrmand). Then Ricardo Dominguez came under investigation for the virtual sit-in performance against the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) on March 4 (against students’ fees in the UC system and the dismantling of educational support for K–12 across California). That was then followed by an investigation by the FBI Office of Cybercrimes. The FBI was seeking to frame the performance as a federal violation, a cybercrime , based on UCOP stating that they lost $5,600 because of the disturbance . It is important to know that the cost had to be over $5,000 for it to be a crime, so UCOP tacked on $600 to push the performance into cybercrime territory. UCSD and UC students, faculty, and labor unions joined national and international groups and organizations to protest the investigations, and the attempt to de-tenure Dominguez, via protest marches, petitions, and letters of support. A letter of support was sent by the UC Multi-Campus Research 344 · rICardO dOMInGUez Group (MRG) in International Performance and Culture to Mark Yudof, president of the UC system on Wednesday, April 7, 2010: Letter from Core Members of the UC MRG in International Culture and Performance Dear President Yudof, Chancellor Fox, SVC Drake, and other concerned parties: We, the members of the UC Multi-Campus Research Group in International Performance and Culture, write in support of Ricardo Dominguez (Associate Professor, Visual Arts, UCSD) and his collaborators at b.a.n.g. lab. We have recently heard disturbing news about Professor Dominguez’s tenure being placed under review in response to several of his recent research and performance projects, and we are deeply concerned about such developments. Professor Dominguez is an internationally renowned performance artist and researcher whose work has been curated and anthologized in a wide range of venues; he is known as an exemplary artist, scholar, and teacher, and we count ourselves fortunate to have him as a colleague within the UC system. We write to provide some disciplinary context for his work, which we hope will encourage you to abandon any potential efforts to revoke his tenure. We understand the projects in question to be: (1) Professor Dominguez’s participation in the inter-institutional project “Transborder Immigrant Tool”; and (2) Professor Dominguez’s participation in a virtual sit-in on the UCOP web site as part of the collective actions taken on March 4, 2010 in response to the current crises facing public higher education in California. The Transborder Immigrant Tool is an innovative project that cross-cuts the technology and the arts. Using low-cost and recycled mobile phones loaded with mapping software, the project aims to reduce deaths and serious illnesses for those traveling through California ’s deserts. Although this project has been met with some controversy in the press, we see this work as being imminently ethical and, perhaps just as importantly, a serious and innovative extension of precedents in performance research that have similarly aimed to pose questions about structural inequality, citizenship and civility, and UCOP verSUS r. dOMInGUez: The FBI InTervIew · 345 humanitarianism—questions that have occupied many different performance traditions through the 20th and 21st centuries, if not earlier. Dominguez’s work, in this regard, is both part of a longer disciplinary tradition in the visual arts and, importantly for the UC, an innovative and forward-thinking extension of these queries to the problems and conditions that define our...