JERÓNIMO 
REYES-RETANA
Map of a Twin Mind
Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow
Depleted Artery
Public Art Program: For a Shared (Outer)Space
i-35
We have the watches, but you have the time
A Fountain (Different Dissents)
x-o.global

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Published Writing
Info

2025









Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow
2021  

Mixed-media installation 
Eight-channel  sound interface, black glass, wooden debris, two-channel video (color, sound,  10 min.)

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.


Installation View (Big Medium, Austin, US;  Museo de Arte, Ciudad Juárez, MX; and Mario Kreuzberg, Basel, CH).




















The Public Art Program: For a Shared (Outer)Space
2023-Ongoing
Community-based initiative at El Campo Pesquero de Playa Bagdad, Tamaulipas, MX. Inflatable planetarium and 180-degree projection. The Playa Bagdad / SpaceX conundrum represents a case of social and environmental injustice that demands recognition and attention through transdisciplinary strategies that think, sense, and do collectively to act affectively. Conceived as a communal act of resistance, the Public Art Program: For a Shared (Outer) Space responds to this urgency by using an inflatable planetarium as an educational and political arena to foster critical conversations about the anxieties and desires that emerge from sharing land with SpaceX’s launch port in Boca Chica, Texas, US.

This initiative emphasizes the pressing need to understand and frame outer space and the Mexico-US borderlands within the concepts of collectivity and cross-border commons. From this perspective, the Public Art Program: For a Shared (Outer) Space engages with the community of Playa Bagdad as a site from which to craft aesthetic assemblages capable of exposing the colonial practices of erasure embedded in SpaceX’s presence in the eastern corner of the Mexico-US borderlands.

After two years and four successful editions, the Public Art Program: For a Shared (Outer) Space will enter a new stage in 2025 with the support of the Educational and Public Program grant awarded by Museo Jumex.














We have the watches, but you have the time
2022

Mixed-media installation
Digital display, calligraphy, two-channel, metal-made sound device (sound looped, 15 min.)
 



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.


























Depleted Artery
2025

4K single-channel video,  22 min,
Depleted Artery 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 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)
2024

Sound installation
Aluminum, speaker wire, metal chains, 16-channel sound interface (sound, looped, 24 mins.)

Commissioned work by Salón Acme.


A Fountain (Different 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 w 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.
 


Islands of Conscious Power in an Ocean of Unconscious Cooperation
2020

Mixed-media  installation
Server rack, carpet, fifteen-channel sound interface (autogenerate sound)

Islands of Conscious Power in an Ocean of Unconscious Cooperation explores the threshold of noise-related political subjectivity. A custom-made interface capable of granulating sound through a fifteen-channel speaker array deconstructs an Amazonian soundscape into millisecond-long fragments. This installation proposes a sonic experience that blurs the lines between the nature/culture division. An intricate setup of speakers, mounting arms, and cables create an entropic system, opening space to speculate about the emergence of machinic ecologies. As an immersive installation, the viewer’s movement across the room creates an uncanny experience that mutates based on their position. When heard from afar, the installation resembles the Amazonian rainforest soundscape. However, when standing close to a single speaker, one hears intermittent data manifesting as a non-intelligible audio signal.

Utilizing components purchased from Amazon to be returned after the 30-day policy, the installation confronts two archetypal figures in the Western cultural imaginary. On tone hand, Amazon symbolizes a multifaceted neoliberal expansion. Conversely, the Amazon represents an exteriorized nature contracting due to voracious global designs.

2020 



x-o.global
2022-present day

Geolocative sound interventions at places offering humanitarian support to the Latin American migrant community.

 Smartphones and mobile technologies are more than tools for completing migratory journeys of forced displacement; they are lifelines. These devices facilitate affordable long-distance communication, access to supportive communities, and portals with essential information. They also serve as documentation tools for recording and denouncing human rights violations. According to reports from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), smartphones provide emotional strength and resilience, helping individuals navigate the complexities of forced migration and a mental health crisis that overwhelms the migrant community.

x-o.global is a socially engaged project designed to amplify the positive effects of mobile technologies within migratory flows and cultural integration processes. Using geolocative media, the x-o.global platform harnesses smartphones and the Global Positioning System (GPS) to create interactive audio experiences that respond to the ongoing migration crisis in the Americas. By intercepting GPS data, the platform synchronizes physical movement with virtual soundscapes, inserting audio maps into camps, shelters, and other humanitarian spaces to support the Latin American migrant community. This project uses natural soundscapes to evoke memory, resilience, and well-being, fostering interculturality through shared experiences. This way, the so-called nature becomes common ground—a space where knowledge systems intersect and evolve.


(Documentation of x-o.global at the unregulated settlement of “La Mula” in Iquique, northern Chile, 2022.)

i-35
2018 

HD Sinlge-channel video (looped, 5 mins.)

i-35 is an ephemeral line of natural light seeping through the crevice of an overpass along the I-35 Highway, just a few hundred yards from the border between Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. This highway serves as the primary ground trading route linking North America and Latin America, with over 11,000 eighteen-wheelers crossing daily from Mexico into the U.S. It is a pivotal axis for international trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The fleeting presence and sudden disappearance of light beneath the overpass evoke a stark political contradiction: the rise of paternalistic border policies enforcing harsh restrictions on international crossings clashes with the norms of a globalized economic order. This interplay of light and shadow mirrors the tension between open trade and the rigid control of human movement, underscoring the fraught dynamics of modern border politics.