Conference of the Birds
Conversation-performance for 1 host, 6 speakers, birds, and treated live sound and songlines
Greetings! To each of you,
and of each of you more than you know,
and more of you than I know,
and more of you than I know,
some of you in listening seats
some of you I rely on to speak,
and I will be your host
EVENT
The conversation takes place surrounded by a live audience. It is set up and circulated ambisonically with a sound artist. The discussion takes its starting point in ancient texts using migratory birds. This serves as a background metaphor to explore current issues.
Live exchanges develop into a changing cycle of sounds and vocal frequencies, including migratory songbirds recorded locally.
This unusual discussion format aims to shift and enhance our attention between speech-led discussion and a more holistic and perceptual listening process.
DURATION
60-75 mins variable
LIVE TEAM
Lead artist and host
Sound artist
Invited Speakers
PREMIERE
Commissioned by Whitstable Biennale 2018
Dublin International Literature Festival 2019
OVERVIEW
Each Conference is recreated and redeveloped in collaboration with its hosting context. It takes its starting point in a transformational narrative using birds as its leading metamorphic figure. This could be a known local story or ancient poem.
Each invited speaker is asked to reflect on their own trajectory and how their specialist field/practice and concerns respond to this transformational motif.
The conversation explores ideas of journeying. It asks how languages migrate and settle, how love poetry crosses histories, how traces create places, and addresses urgent questions around migrations, refuge, translation, elemental languages, and endangered species.
This unusual immersive discussion format aims to shift and enhance the listeners’ attention between speech-led discussion and interactions towards a more holistic and perceptual listening process. As speech changes into waves and sound particulates, the discussion unearths shadows of song and infuses the voices with other memory.
Photo credit: Thierry Bal
BACKGROUND
The events’ title was inspired by the ancient sufi multi vocal collection Conference of the Birds by Attar’s poem as a starting point for discussion and sonic perceptual transformation. Each speaker is invited to discuss and share various experiences and dimensions of exile, migration as it manifest in their perosnal experience and in applied in their work in the field. The form of the quest poem of the 30 reluctant travelling birds is at the root of the exchanges.
In 2019 in Dublin, the event took its starting-point the old Irish tale of mad King Sweeney’s transformation into a bird and condemned to roam over Ireland in perpetual exile.
The artist has invited six speakers from different disciplines to discuss its contemporary resonance. The conversation will explore ideas of journeying, ask how languages migrate and settle, how love poetry crosses histories, how traces create places, and will address urgent questions around resettlement, translation, elemental languages and endangered species.
ON-GOING
The team is currently in discussion with partners for potential events in 2027.
CONTACT
Should you wish to discuss or book this event for your festival or venue, please make contact:
Michaela Freeman, Project Manager
SPEAKERS
2018
Shadi Angelina Bazeghi (Iranian-Danish poet and translator), David Wallace (medievalist), Geoff Sample (ornithologist and environmental sound artist), Clyde Ancarno (sociolinguist, interspecies research), Cherry Smyth (poet, art writer and curator) and Adam Chodzko (visual artist).
+ Recorded dawn chorus of birds including a nightingale settled for the season in nearby Stodmarsh.
2019
Ceara Conway (Irish singer and visual artist) Vahni Capildeo, (Trinidadian Scottish poet), Prof. Vera Regan, (Sociolinguist, Tracker of Bilingual Dublin communities), Geoff Sample (Bird recordist and sound artist), David Wallace (Medievalist Scholar and Cruise guide), James L. Smith, (Geographer of the Sea, Trinity Dublin).
+ Migratory songbirds recorded on their way out from Ballyhoorisky and Claddaghduff early September.
CREATIVE & PRODUCTION TEAMS
Michaela Freeman, Project Manager
Elyssa Fagan, Social Media
Harriet Cook, Project Assistant
SOUND ARTISTS
Dan Scott (2018)
Rob Blazey (2019)
BIRD RECORDINGS
Geoff Sample
COMMISSIONED BY
Whitstable Biennale, 2018
International Literature Festival Dublin (ILFD), 2019
DOCUMENTATION
Film/editing: Andrew Delaney
Photography: Thierry Bal
BACKGROUND, PART 2
First developed as a commission for the Whitstable Biennale 2018, this exploratory discussion format aims to shift and enhance our attention between speech-led discussion and a more holistic and perceptual listening process.
Each Conference is recreated and redeveloped according to its hosting context, yet it always takes as its starting point a transformational narrative using birds as its leading metamorphic figure. Each invited speaker is asked to reflect on their own trajectory and how their specialist field/practice and concerns respond to this transformational motif.
The subtitle to the Dublin commission points to one of the more famous imaginary birds of Ireland and comes from a beautiful and harsh medieval poem: the legend of Buile Shuibhne, Mad King Sweeney, cursed during battle and condemned to fly over many of Ireland’s geographies as a metamorphic and unresting talking/singing bird-shape. It has been the subject of many poetic (and now TV manifestation) and was translated as Sweeney Astray by Seamus Heaney (1983). A tormented yet also intensely rich figure and poem.
