Ozymandias is a conceptual artwork and a symbolic intervention against the human rights violations perpetrated by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It takes the form of a piece of software that runs autonomously on a user’s computer, which submits sections of important writings on the history of totalitarianism—including Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism—to the ICE tip submission form. When it does so, it reports ICE’s human rights violations to itself while educating those who review these submissions about the dangers of their work. The goal of the project is not to destroy or disable the tip submission system, but rather to illuminate injustice through a tactically poetic gesture that underscores for those who perpetrate human rights violations the kind of world they are helping usher into being (with or without knowing it).

The piece was exhibited at the 2021 MSU Department of Art, Art History, and Design Faculty Triennial and was built in collaboration with Zachary Kaiser