In Search of Aztlan…
2019-2020
Radio action
crystal radio, VLF receiver, AM/FM receiver, wood, magnetic wire, yarn

In Search of Aztlan… is an intervention-based work that follows Rodríguez as he explores the territory around his childhood home, contemplating his roots, and in doing so cracking a window into the US/MX border.  This multi-layered project has taken three main forms including the initial radio actions taken in the Sonoran Deret, as well as a mobile video intervention and gallery installation.

In Search of Aztlan…
2020
Performance intervention
LED advertising truck, video, FM transmitter, wood, magnetic wire, thread

By merging dashcam videos, with audio recordings of radio signals, the work explores how borders, both physical and psychological, shape our individual and collective identities. 

Utilizing a large mobile advertising LED screen as a roving radio station, the truck transmits audio recordings from the US/MX border over a micro FM station simultaneously playing them back into the city streets over loudspeakers. Accompanying the audiovisual broadcasts are voice and morse code translations of texts by Latinx and Chicanx philosophers, artists, and poets. 

Installed on the truck is an experimental radio antenna that fuses the Mexican folk craft known as an Ojo de Dios (God’s eye) with a traditional loop antenna. Ojos de Dios is believed to have the power to see and understand things unknown to the human eye similar to how a radio antenna functions.  

In Search of Aztlan…
2021
Gallery installation
FM transmitter, barbwire, T-shirt, video, archival photos, crystal radio, wood, magnetic wire, yarn, stones, sand

Documentation of gallery exhibition at Maison de la Culture Parc-Ex as part of the group show Flux Acoustique along with artists Victor Vargas, Maria Hoyos, and curated by Mariza Rosales