Ehécatl, as the wind blows in all directions | 2024

Ehécatl, as the wind blows in all directions - 2024

Sound installation

five radios, five pirate radios, five audio recordings 

duration variable

This sound installation addresses the complexities of the migratory Mestizx experience and the notion of territory, where narratives, temporalities, real and symbolic spaces are superimposed in perpetual mutation.

In the installation, the notion of time is dislocated, and Rodríguez echoes ancestral voices and the recognition of his native heritage. He calls upon Mesoamerican mythology in the title Ehécatl, the Nahua word for the god of air and wind, often linked or assimilated to Quetzalcoatl and associated with the cardinal points of Aztec culture. The breath of Ehécatl inspires the installation's sound work, which was born from the recording of the artist childhood Eagle silbato (whistle) reverberating within an outdoor hockey rink in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal and mixed with recordings done in sites across turtle island (Rio Rico, Cuernavaca, Seattle, New York).

The recording was shared with four collaborators who have links with the artist as well as with a significant place and period in his life, so that the work moves around, opens a conversation, and brings together personal experiences. Each collaborator in turn played and simultaneously re-recorded the sound in an external location. Through these gestures of transmission, dialogue and superimposition of a recording from one person to another, the boundaries of identity and territory are diluted. Sound acts as a portal to trajectories, narratives and affects that cohabit in a dislocated time and space, inviting the public into introspective and provoking encounters, sensitive and intrinsically human experiences that resonate thanks to the artistic gesture.

The sound installation opens a timeless space, and the structure of the piece invites the public to explore the work in an investigation of meanings and frequencies by virtue of a sound spatialization composed of a constellation of five radios acting as reference points, guiding us into temporal void. These transmission channels communicate, superimpose and interact with each other, resonating with us through our bodies as we move through them, engaging us in a retrospective experience beyond time.