Martín Rodríguez
As a multidisciplinary artist and independent curator, Martín Rodríguez’s work emerges from his Chicanx upbringing along the Arizona-Mexico border. His practice mixes performance with interventions and installations, investigating radio as a transformative medium.
After a surgery to remove a brain tumor that left him temporarily paralyzed and physically unable to work as a musician, he was compelled to look for new meaning. One day, in a frustrated attempt to play a basic scale, Rodríguez heard mysterious voices resonating in the pickup coils of his guitar. Realizing the source was a radio transmission, he seized the opportunity arising from this phenomenon and began improvising with it. This ear-opening moment revealed the power of radio, and it quickly became his primary material for expression. Notably, his work has been presented by the Musée d’art contemporain Montréal (CA), MUAC (MX), Darling Foundry (CA), Walking Festival for Sound (UK/PL), Spektrum (DE), as well as various festivals and performance venues across Canada, and the US.
In addition to producing his own work, he organises and curates various events, happenings, and festivals including: Calling Planet Earth! (2021), Bodies in Resonance (2021), Acoustic Mirror (2020), the international digital art festival Sight and Sound Festival (2019), Ibrida*Pluri A/V Festival (2019), Amplified (2018) and PirateBlocRadio In-Situ (2017). From 2014 to 2018, he worked as Technical Director, Lab Director, and Co-director of Eastern Bloc, an artist-run centre dedicated to presenting emerging media artists in Montréal, Canada.