The Workshop for Spatial Investigation

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A community-based educational initiative in the Mexico–US borderlands for listening to a new chapter of outer-space industrialization.

Initiator(s)

Jerónimo Reyes-Retana, Ana Cerino

Description

The Workshop for Spatial Investigation materializes as a schoolhouse in El Campo Pesquero de Playa Bagdad, Tamaulipas, Mexico. This marginalized settlement, located at the easternmost edge of the Mexico–US borderlands, is home to approximately 1,500 inhabitants whose livelihoods depend on fishing in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and cultivating oysters along the banks of the Río Bravo/Grande, which marks the intricate geopolitical threshold between Mexico and the United States.

Within this context of geopolitical and cultural confluence, the community of Playa Bagdad now faces a new layer of complexity. SpaceX’s spaceport, known as Starbase, lies only four kilometers north of the river. At Starbase, SpaceX has been testing the largest rocket ever built, known as Starship/Super Heavy, a vehicle intended to support the colonization of Mars and whose development is also crucial to deploying thousands of satellites into orbit for Starlink.

The Workshop for Spatial Investigation emerged in response to this dire and asymmetrical scenario, following more than five years of research grounded in collaboration and community engagement. It was conceived as a public educational space for listening to the concerns of those who live and work in Playa Bagdad and must coexist with a unique form of transboundary sonic violence produced by SpaceX’s rocket launches.

Goals

It would be inaccurate to suggest that the Workshop for Spatial Investigation aims to stop SpaceX’s operations in the region, as these are part of a broader infrastructural development project seeking to inaugurate a new chapter of outer-space industrialization—one fully backed by powerful political actors. The goal, therefore, is to implement critical pedagogies that provide participants with tools to both imagine and negotiate a more equitable future. Through workshops on mediation technologies that teach participants how to use computers, the internet, sound recorders, decibelometers, and video and photographic cameras, the program also aims to counter-register the ongoing transformations of the locality’s soundscape and landscape resulting from SpaceX’s activities.

Beneficial outcomes

The Workshop for Spatial Investigation is the community’s only site offering free internet access, functioning as a public educational initiative where local youth gather for workshops in digital literacy and media arts. These practices are framed as tools for counter-investigation into the transboundary sonic violence produced by SpaceX’s rocket launches. At the core of the program is an inflatable planetarium. Through a process of subversion, this artifact, typically used to glorify science and technological progress, has been transformed into a multisensory open forum for sharing the desires and anxieties that emerge from sharing territory with SpaceX. In this sense, the inflatable planetarium becomes a space for listening to one another.
For adult participants, we hold periodic information sessions that provide conceptual tools to identify and articulate inconsistencies in the environmental impact assessments that have enabled SpaceX’s operations in the region while systematically erasing the existence of the Playa Bagdad community. The initiative has also prepared and accompanied residents as they share their testimonies during virtual public hearings organized by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the U.S. federal agency that authorizes and oversees SpaceX’s launch operations in the region.

The Workshop for Spatial Investigation has been made possible through the financial support of the Jumex Art Foundation and, above all, the trust and generosity of a group of oyster farmers who live and work in Playa Bagdad and donated land to build the schoolhouse. In this sense, the Workshop for Spatial Investigation belongs to the Playa Bagdad community. The role of its initiators is simply to act as facilitators and co-conspirators, nothing more.

Location

Mexico - US Border

Users

Jerónimo Reyes-Retana, Ana Cerino, a core group of participants, participants in the informational sessions, public workshops and activities held on SpaceX launch days, and other practitioners who have contributed to the program by facilitating workshops.

Maintained by

Jerónimo Reyes-Retana, Ana Cerino, and Reyna San Juan Gabino. Made possible through the Education and Public Program Grant from the Jumex Art Foundation (MX).

Duration

2023-ongoing

Category

Scientific
Pedagogical
Politics
Urban Development
Economy
Environment
Social

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