Every Tuesday, The Duty offers a space to the artisans of a periodical. This week, we offer you a text published in SPACE contemporary artNo. 137 (Spring-Summer 2024).
Thanks to their song, if not their cry, birds are heard more often than they are seen. They require hearing rather than sight, and many times, despite our desire to see them, we never spot them.
There are water birds, savannah and prairie birds, forest birds, but also city and garden birds. Among them are the passerines — songbirds —, the most widespread group in the world. Depending on their species, their vocalizations vary from the melodious song of the blackbird or swallow to the sometimes shrill croaks of the raven or crow.
Despite everything, their sound intrusion contributes to the feeling that life is pleasant. Whether by babbling, singing, chirping, chattering, squawking, chirping, warbling, these winged animals contribute through the musicality of the world to human well-being.
Produced in 2016, a documentary entitled The silence of the birds recalls that the decline in the varied sounds produced by birds constitutes a signal of the situation of life in the era of the Anthropocene. Subtitled Imagine a world deprived of birdsong…, This film recognizes the importance of the avian race for the biodiversity of nature, while several threats contribute to their decline all over the planet. The causes of their decline are multiple.
From a human perspective, some species are considered pests, especially when it comes to protecting seedlings or even our way of life. This is what artist Graeme Patterson evokes in Strange Birds (2018-2024), an installation recently presented at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, which reminds us how starlings can become an invasive species.
In a previous project, Fenced In (2017), Patterson depicts them ejecting their droppings into pools. Adapting to different environments, this species of birds, known to be highly social, highlights the difficult cohabitation of certain feathered beasts with our way of inhabiting the world.
Still from the same artist, a series of sculptures named Ghost Birds (2019) shows the ghostly footprints of birds that have hit a window. These collisions highlight how our appropriation of territory, especially in peri-urban areas, also remains a significant cause of the loss of thousands of birds.
Imaginary
Birds have always stimulated our imagination. According to various myths and beliefs, they announce good or bad omens. In several stories, the bird symbolizes less a threat than a messenger. It participates entirely in the celebration of the world.
In the West, however, metaphysical thought has made the human being an anthropological exception. It is only recently that a new sensitivity has been awakened to concern for the world, and in particular to this inestimable treasure that the song of these winged animals represents.
Aired at the International Festival of Films on Art in 2023 and titled Language of birds (Baldanders Films, 2022), a documentary by Érik Bullot tells a story that projects us into a future where birds are nothing more than archives of a time gone by.
This docufiction shows men and women trying to translate the language of birds by imitation. However, despite the seriousness that guides this attempt at communication, the song of birds remains inimitable. This effort of transposition would seem rather the metaphor of a nostalgic rapprochement with sounds that, for us, living today, risk soon being missed.
While it is indeed impossible to deny the decline of certain avian species, art historian Bénédicte Ramade especially wanted to arouse our interest in those that are still alive. She reminds us that many creators, concerned about the birds that remain, “watch, listen, watch and transmit these sensitive worlds”. Thus, instead of focusing on their disappearance, we must dive “into the wonder that their profound difference provides”.
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