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Jerónimo Reyes-Retana (b. Mexico City, 1984) is a researcher and artist. An impulse to cultivate compositional forces through long-term projects guides his practice into the fissures (dis)connecting governance regimes built upon technological superiority. By the contingent implementation of relational and reflexive methodologies in peripheral sites across Latin America, Reyes-Retana examines hybrid territorialities exposed to the social, environmental, and economic anxieties derived from the techno-utopian determinisms of Western culture. In his work, these places act as nerve centers to interrogate the political anatomy of a global design, where practices of systemic erasure are still obscured by the seductive fictions of modern/colonial progress. Reyes-Retana’s artistic and investigative interests gravitate toward a situated mode of praxis, deploying various mediation technologies as instruments of inquiry, place-making, and counter-archiving. This approach fosters dialogic relationships that inform installations and community-based iterations, striving to open pathways of epistemic disobedience to alternative political imaginaries.

Reyes-Retana’s work has been shown in individual exhibitions at institutions and non-profit spaces such as Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez (MX), Mario Kreuzberg in Basel (CH), and Big Medium and Co-Lab Projects in Austin (US). In 2019, the Mexico City-based gallery OMR commissioned his site-responsive installation Map of a Twin Mind. In 2020, Reyes-Retana participated in the acclaimed group show Otrxs Mundxs at Mexico’s emblematic art institution Museo Tamayo. In 2021, his installation Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow was nominated for the Lumen Prize for Art and Technology in the Global South Award category. In 2023, Reyes-Retana launched the first edition of the Public Art Program: For a Shared (Outer) Space, a community-based initiative at El Campo Pesquero de Playa Bagdad in Tamaulipas (MX)—a marginalized settlement subjected to the transboundary sonic violence inflicted by SpaceX’s launch port located on the US-Mexico borderlands. In 2024, he was selected as the commissioned artist for the central patio installation of Salón Acme’s eleventh edition in Mexico City, where he presented A Fountain (Different Dissents).

His writing has been published by The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, New York City (US); xCoAx’s Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X, Coimbra (PT); Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City (MX); Sociology Lens: Cercereal Edgelands, Alberta (CA); and Toda la Teoría del Universo, Concepción (CL). Reyes-Retana has participated in artist residencies at Fabrica, Treviso (IT); Toda la Teoría del Universo, Concepción (CL), Casa Wabi, Puerto Escondido (MX); and Ucross, Wyoming (US).

Reyes-Retana is a doctoral candidate in Emergent Technologies and Media Arts Practices at the University of Colorado Boulder (US). He received his MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from the University of Texas at Austin (US), for which he was awarded the Study Abroad FONCA-CONACYT Fellowship through the National Council for Arts, Culture, and Technology (MX). Additionally, Reyes-Retana has participated in parallel education programs such as Materia Abierta and Soma Summer in Mexico City (MX).

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Depleted Artery is film that examines how the binational waters of the Colorado River represent an artery to navigate the ambivalence of modern/colonial fallacious narratives of developmentalism anchored to the Mexico-US border. This film installation juxtaposes imagery of major dams modulating the river’s flow in the US—such as the Hoover Dam, Glen Canyon Dam, and Davis Dam—with narrations of people from San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, MX. This Mexican border town once saw the untamed waters of the Colorado River flow, which have now been totally depleted to produce electricity for three major cities in the southwest of the US.

A Fountain (Diffrent Dissents) is a site-specific installation that suggests a dialogue between its form, its sound, and the space it inhabits. This large-format work, for which I was commissioned by the renowned Mexico City-based art platform Salón Acme, responds to the complex layers of history beneath a building that, at the beginning of the 20th century, embodied the anxiety for modernization characteristic of “El Porfiriato” (1876-1911). In this context, the fountains located in central courtyards were status symbols, where control over a constant flow of water also represented colonial interests in externalizing the so-called nature to dominate it. A Fountain (Different Dissents) is conceived both as a dissident fountain and a metaphorical waterfall. Through a 16-channel sound interface hanging from the heights of the central patio, this installation reproduces a composition made from a variety of sounds produced by the waters of the Colorado River (Mexico and the USA). This river originates in Colorado, with its waters flowing through five different states in the US before finally reaching its delta on the Mexican side of the border. Using field recordings taken at different points along the water collection and consumption networks from this river (dams, irrigation and drainage canals, intakes, sprinklers, pumping stations, automated irrigation systems, wells, and pipes), A Fountain (different Dissents) seeks to open a space for reflection to consider the environmental, geopolitical, and historical implications of a body of water in crisis, existing as a geopolitical (dis)connection between Mexico and the United States.

Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow is informed by a counter-investigation examining a unique case of transboundary sonic violence at the easternmost edge of the Mexican side of the Mexico-US border, where the waters of the Rio Bravo/Grande River meet the Gulf of Mexico. In this scenario, El Campo Pesquero de Playa Bagdad, Tamaulipas, Mexico—a marginalized and underserved fishing community—is confronted by a new episode in the industrialization of outer space. With the current development of SpaceX’s spaceport two miles north of the border in Boca Chica, Texas (US), Playa Bagdad now lives with the detrimental acoustic shock waves produced by Starship/Superheavy—the largest spacecraft ever built—. Sound in this context travels across the border with enough potency to act as a mobilizing force impacting the body, the biosphere, and the rudimentary architecture of the community. Ironically, Playa Bagdad now stands in the front row to witness an unprecedented techno-political spectacle while being geopolitically erased by the state agencies that permit SpaceX operations in the region. Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow comprises a wooden debris structure resembling Playa Bagdad’s vernacular architecture. A monolithic, glass-made eight-channel sound device hanging from the structure emits a voice-over reflecting on the paradoxes of how ascending from the Earth is conceived as an absolute form of progress. In the final sequence of a two-channel video documenting a Starship/Superheavy launch, the black box reproduces the engines’ roar, creating a sonic atmosphere of vulnerability reverberating through the wooden debris structure.

In 2022, Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow was exhibited individually at the Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez (Chihuahua, MX). This museum, a leading cultural institution within the Mexico-US border art circuit, boasts suggestive architecture that significantly connects with the project’s sonic and acoustic provocations. The circular shape of its central room and the 30-meter-wide concave fiberglass dome transform the space into a monumental resonance box. Here, the complex scenario confronting the fishing community of Playa Bagdad (Tamaulipas, MX) with the acoustic shock waves produced by SpaceX at the Boca Chica launch port (Texas, US) resonated with much more potency.

Over the course of building a relationship with El Campo Pesquero de Playa Bagdad, I’ve started conducting a series of information sessions to share new findings and concerns emerging throughout my research process. These sessions respond to the lack of attention from the authorities in charge of regulating SpaceX’s environmental impact in the region, which up until now, still haven’t approached the community to open a dialogue about the ecological, political, and cultural implications of living with SpaceX in their backyard. The Playa Bagdad / SpaceX equation represents a case of a potential sacrifice zone demanding to be recognized and addressed by trans-disciplinary strategies that allow thinking, sensing, and feeling collectively to act affectively. In this scenario, art opens ground for the emergence of critical place-making practices looking forward to inserting new voices into political space. Provoked by using the means of art and culture to learn to unlearn, to then relearn through a dialogical process in which “thinking is doing and doing is thinking,” I proposed the initiative to make a public art program conceived as a communitarian act of re-existence.

The Public Art Program: For a Shared (Outer)Space uses an inflatable planetarium as an educational and political arena to unfold critical conversations about the urgent need to understand and frame (outer)space under the notions of collectivity and cross-border commons. The planetarium hosts multi-sensorial, educational, and interactive experiences for young and adult audiences. This initiative foresees the community of Playa Bagdad not as a site of extraction, but as one of cultural construction wherein to assemble aesthetic propositions capable of rendering visible the colonial voids emanating from SpaceX’s presence in the region and the industrialization of outer space.

Published Writing & Talks :

A Public Art Program at El Campo Pesquero de Playa Bagdad: Transboundary Noise and a Shared (Outer)Space
Presentation at Radical Reckoning: Invoking the Elements for Collective Change, in the National Gathering Imagining America
Gathering: Artist + Scholars in Public Life, Providence, US, 2023.

Playa Bagdad / SpaceX: Transboundary Noise, the Colonial Voids of Infrastructure, and Counter-Archiving as a Place-Making Practice
Reyes-Retana, Jerónimo. 2023. 'Playa Bagdad / SpaceX: transboundary noise, the colonial voids of infrastructure, and counter-archiving as a place- making practice,’Making Space, Making Place: Marking the Americas, Seventh Symposium on Latin American Art, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) New York City, US. 

Playa Bagdad / SpaceX: Sound, Necropolitics, and the Industrialization of Space
Reyes-Retana, Jerónimo. 2022. 'Playa Bagdad / SpaceX: Sound, Necropolitics, and the Industrialization of Space’, Proceedings of the xCoAx 10th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X. Porto: Research Institute in Art, Design and Society School of Fine Arts, University of Porto, pp. 75-84

Playa Bagdad / SpaceX: reflejos de ruido
Reyes-Retana, Jerónimo. 2022. 'Playa Bagdad / SpaceX: Reflejos de ruido’, Presente Expandido en PICS-Fluido, Centro de la Imágen, México

Playa Bagdad / SpaceX: Sound, Necropolitics, and the Industrialization of Space    
Talk at Royal Anthropological Institute, RAI Film Festival, London, UK. 2023

A mixed-media installation in which the sound of a sharp device engraving the phrase ‘you have the watches, but we have the time’ moves inside and across a metal bar that hangs from the ceiling. Local militia groups coined this proverb in response to the highly advanced technology of the US military during the Afghanistan occupation (2001). The installation features a calligraphic addition that says 'nosotros tenemos los relojes, pero ustedes tienen el tiempo.' This phrase, which is the Spanish translation of the installation's title, is complemented by a blurry image of an armed soldier carrying a virtual reality device. A multi-sensorial assemblage centering around a cryptic sonic experience prompts reflection on how Western domination propagates through frameworks of (hyper)(in)visibility that rely on technological innovation. The installation also highlights how the fight against imperialism involves warfare strategies where patience and time are crucial for eventual liberation.

For people in the context of mobility, smartphones and mobile technologies represent an oasis of survival. These devices are an essential tool for communicating with the localities, obtaining information for tracing routes, registering and reporting situations of danger, accessing support communities and information forums on legal issues, and navigating through different GPS applications. x-o.global is socially-engaged and participatory platform that speculates about the capacity of smartphones and the GPS to act as cultural production and distribution media responding to the migratory crisis in Latin America. x-o.global recognizes the significant impact of mobile technologies within migratory journeys to propose an alternative use of smartphones and the GPS through an online platform that enables interactive spaces for auditive stimulation. The project delivers recreational experiences that help to release stress and alleviate the cultural confrontations and emotional complexities derived from the processes of migratory mobility. x-o.global's execution methodology considers camps, shelters, refuges, and unregulated settlements as optimal locations, since they are spaces that provide people in the context of mobility with an atmosphere of temporary relief, where it is feasible to channel the mind of the audience towards reparatory imaginaries; where a sensory experience can potentially become an act of resilience. x-o.global propose a GPS-sensitive interface using geographic coordinates to insert interactive sound maps into camps, shelters, refuges, and unregulated settlements for migrants and refugees in Latin America. x-o.global navigates the frictions of a social and political order shaped by technological interconnectivity and humanitarian disconnection. The project is informed by the effects of mobile technologies in migratory flows that entail cultural integration processes. x-o.global appropriates the GPS as a techno-poetic gesture reprogramming the terms of the migratory social struggles by creating a network of resilience. The project seeks to empower the action of speculating about strategies where the same platforms that support hegemonic systems of dominance and oppression, can also host sites for reflecting on how technology could shape other futurities.

Islands of Conscious Power in an Ocean of Unconscious Cooperation is informed by Reyes-Retana’s interest in exploring the threshold of the political subjectivity of noise. A custom-made interface with the capacity to granulate sound through a fifteen-channel speaker array breaks down an Amazonian soundscape into millisecond-long fragments. Islands of Conscious Power in an Ocean of Unconscious Cooperationproposes an experience of sonic deconstruction that diffuses the division between the so-called nature and culture/technology. An intricate setup composed of speakers, mount arms, and cables materializes an entropic system of connectivity that opens space to speculate about the emergence of machinic ecologies. As an immersive installation, the viewer’s movement across the room determines an uncanny experience that mutates depending on the position of the body. When heard from afar, the sound emitted from the installation resembles the soundscape of the Amazonian rainforest. However, when standing close to a single speaker, all one hears is intermittent data manifesting as a non-intelligible audio signal. By utilizing components purchased from Amazon, all of which were to be returned after its 30-day return policy, the installation confronts two archetypical figures of the Western cultural imaginary. On the one hand, Amazon represents a multifaceted neoliberal expanding force. On the other, the Amazonian symbolizes an exteriorized nature that is dramatically contracting due to the voracious global design of modernity/coloniality.

Map of a Twin Mind is a site-responsive, mixed-media installation commissioned by the Mexico City-based gallery OMR. It is informed by a multifaceted research process—including fieldwork, oral accounts, and historical data—that examines the hybrid urban thread of the eastern side of the Mexico-US border. A double-sided mirror wall bisects the room of a colonial house, acting as a mechanism for rendering the viewer’s reflection. It suggests a critical dialogue connoting the semantic irony of the Mexico-US border towns’ designation as ‘twin cities.’ The confrontation of the deteriorated walls of the room with the pristine nature of the mirrors points to the US-Mexico border as an apparatus empowering self-centered geopolitics that views the periphery exclusively as scaffolding for transnational trading, labor exploitation, and natural resource extraction. A set of sixteen concealed sound exciters—devices that convert variations in a physical quantity into sound—distributed across the mirrors enables the double-sided mirror wall to function as a large-format sound reproduction device. The vibrations of strident sound coming from the reflective glass mimic a metal object tapping behind the mirror wall. A 24-hour audio clip reproduces a Morse code translation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), an international treaty that remains central to shaping power dynamics across the Mexican borderlands.

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All images and texts on this site
are the creations of Jerónimo Reyes-Retana.