Faculty Member Robert Ransick’s Casa Segura Project Aims to Relieve Border Tensions

Digital Arts faculty member Robert Ransick’s Casa Segura Project exhibited from September 27 through November 10, 2007 at New York City’s Eyebeam—an art and technology center—isn’t a typical art installation. In fact, for some Mexican immigrants crossing the Sonoran desert in Southern Arizona illegally, it can mean the difference between life and death.

Stocked with basic essentials such as water, medical supplies, and nutritional items, The Casa Segura, at first glance, may appear to function more like a miniature, digitalized Red Cross station than a work of art. But look closer. Ransick, with support from Eyebeam and the Franklin Furnace Archive, has created a dynamic bilingual web space which serves to “facilitate a creative exchange between Mexican migrants, property owners whose land they cross, and the general public,” according to the Project’s website.

Responding to conversations with friends living along this highly charged region, Ransick, with others, helped adopt an alternative to defenses such as fencing, walls, and vigilante activity as a way to respond to property owners concerns for the security of their homes and the well-being of Mexican immigrants. One owner explains, “Not long ago, our house was broken into while we were away. The only things taken were some jeans and shirts, a few pair of walking shoes, and food.” They continue, “We realized that it could only have been desperate migrants, we felt sad--their taking only necessities spoke eloquently of their need… and desperation.”

Property owners installing The Casa Segura (The Safe House) on their land hope that the small solar-powered structure allows Mexican immigrants to share stories via an embedded touch screen interface. Ransick explains, “The interface provides a simple means to draw, write messages, or make a pictogram from a set of ready-made graphical icons, gathered largely from the vernacular of traveler graffiti, pictograms, and the Mexican tradition of ex-voto painting.” The images and messages are uploaded to the Casa Segura website from the remote location, which will allow the larger public to read or view narratives about immigrant journeys. Working with icons that represent Mexican culture, geography, and myths, Ransick collaborated with Alberto Morackis and Guadalupe Serrano of Yonke Arte Público in Nogales, Mexico to capture recognizable cultural visual icons as a way to facilitate narrative work that relates and represents shared experiences.

For more information about The Casa Segura project please visit www.casasegura.us. 

To read about Casa Segura on the popular art blog We Make Money Not Art, click here.