Void in Resonance

Artist and researcher Jerónimo Reyes-Retana defines colonial voids as territories and communities subjected to cartographic erasure in service of modern/colonial expansion through infrastructure and industrialization. One such place is El Campo Pesquero de Playa Bagdad, a marginalized community at the eastern edge of the Mexico–U.S. border, where the Río Bravo/Grande meets the Gulf of Mexico.
Just four kilometers north, SpaceX’s spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas, threatens Playa Bagdad’s oyster field with sonic shock waves produced during rocket launches—a unique case of transboundary sonic violence. Informed by over four years of fieldwork, Void in Resonance juxtaposes the vernacular architecture and technologies of Playa Bagdad with elements that evoke SpaceX’s high-tech designs. Through a deliberately underexposed aesthetic, the work reflects on the human and ecological costs of an emerging era of outer space industrialization.