Presented in conjunction with August Black's residency at Wave Farm, Migrant Detention Radio is a live one-hour radio conversation using Black's software platform Mezcal, about migrant detention in the U.S. with visual artist Eliseo Ortiz and historian Jessica Ordaz who will be live from Otay Mesa and Denver, CO..

Write Ortiz and Ordaz, "In solidarity with the fight to oppose the criminalization of migrants in the U.S., this conversation will take place at two different locations that are significant to understanding the impact of privatized migrant detention and its long history of oppression: Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego and Aurora ICE Processing Center in Denver. This event will be hosted by Wave Farm Radio through Radio Research by August Black and powered by Mezcal – a web application that aims to catalyze new forms of live interactive radio. "

Radio Research host: August Black is a hybrid practitioner of art, design and engineering. He makes experimental spatial and acoustic situations, often by building his own technological artifacts and instruments in hardware and software. In the past, he’s been a member of arts organizations such as the ORF Kunstradio and the Ars Electronica Futurelab, as well as a former member of the engineering team at Cycling ‘74, makers of Max/MSP.

Migrant detention radio participants: Eliseo Ortiz is a visual artist and filmmaker. His work interrogates borderlands and human migration in the context of neoliberal globalization. His artistic work has been presented in Mono No Aware in New York City, Centro Cultural Tlatelolco in Mexico City and Currents New Media in Santa Fe. His writing has been included in InVisible Culture: Journal for Visual Culture and You Are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography.

Jessica Ordaz is an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She received her doctorate from the University of California Davis in American History. During the 2017-2018 academic year, Ordaz was the Andrew W. Mellon Sawyer Seminar postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington, which focused on comparative racial capitalism. Her first book, The Shadow of El Centro: A History of Migrant Incarceration and Solidarity, was released in March 2021.