Void In Resonance
A film by Jerónimo Reyes-Retana
Tuesday, September 9, 2025
Doors: 5:00 pm / Screening: 6:00 pm
In his writing, artist and researcher Jerónimo Reyes-Retana (b. 1984Mexico) defines "colonial voids" as territorialities and communities subjected to practices of cartographic erasure that enable the expansion of modern/colonial global designs through infrastructure development and industrialization projects. Such is the case of El Campo Pesquero de Playa Bagdad, a marginalized and underserved community located at the easternmost edge of the Mexico–U.S. border, where the waters of the Río Bravo meet the Gulf of Mexico.
At this confluence lies an oyster field vital to Playa Bagdad’s local economy. However, with the construction of SpaceX’s spaceport just two miles north, on U.S. soil, the human bodies, biosphere, and vernacular architecture surrounding Playa Bagdad’s oyster field are now threatened by the sonic shock waves produced by SpaceX’s massive rockets during lift-off.
Informed by over four years of fieldwork and community engagement, Void in Resonance—originally conceived as a film installation—captures intimate moments of a SpaceX launch through the eyes of those working in the oyster field, revealing the personal and collective impacts of the land-based infrastructure required for what has been mistakenly called a new era of outer space exploration when, in reality, it marks a new era of outer space industrialization.
Following the film screening, Jerónimo Reyes-Retana will join Eric Coombs Esmail in conversation about the film. The program will end with a short Q&A session.
Eric Coombs Esmail is a critical media artist, theorist, and pedagogist interested in labor, spirituality, and the politics of human migration. Trained as a cinematographer, his practice has taken him both far afield and close to home where he has explored ideas around power, place, and experience. Eric is assistant professor of critical media practices and the director of the Center for Documentary Media at the University of Colorado Boulder, which hosts the annual Mimesis Documentary Festival.