Enar de Dios Rodríguez

Ecotone

Ecotone by Enar de Dios Rodríguez is a video work presented in six chapters, each beginning and ending with a one-sided telephone dialog with an informal, friendly and conversational tone, that leads quickly into complex philosophical subjects. The first chapter is an introduction, and the last is an epilogue, and both employ interfaces (a smartphone screen, and an optical illusion, respectively) to invite the viewer to make conceptual connections across the chapters. An “ecotone” is a region of transition between two biological communities. The word has other connotations such a tension point, zones of overlap and intersection. Rodriguez is “interested in demonstrating how economic, political, historical, social aspects intersect with each other…” and how these zones of overlap might be the key to deciding what paths we might take to construct a shared (and survivable) future. There is an unmistakable sense of urgency about the climate embedded in the work. Each chapter outlines, contains, or describes different landscapes—both literally and metaphorically—via varying levels of ‘zoom’, from a birds-eye-view of geography to a microscopic look at tiny spaces. Using clever interruptions and self-reflexive commentary along the way, a meta-narrative that invites the viewer to think about seeing and being seen is also developed. In chapter two, Rodríguez selected from more than ten thousand images taken by ‘trap’ cameras, which are motion-activated and were used in the wild to document animal life in a protected zone in the Central Africa Republic (and a narrative informed by a close friendship with a caretaker of the eco-zone). Other chapters speak to different kinds of spaces, and range from massive agriculture fields captured via satellite imaging, private spaces via a mobile phone camera lens, and molecular spaces through 3D animation.