From January 3, 2019, to January 2, 2020, I kept a daily bird list. By listing the first word of each species name I perceived each day, this exercise generated an archive of prose. For example, here’s the entry from June 7: Sulphur Australasian pied Indian rainbow.
The lists are a record of classification and ordering by human-written forms of naming, but can no longer serve that purpose. The prose becomes an abstract representation of this record, as well as linguistic scores and mnemonics for sonic experiences. Geographic specificity is often lost, language is repeated, becomes politicized, queered, racialized, and so forth. The lists function like scores, lyrics, and prose. Through committing to creating painting-objects from each of these lists, which are predominantly text-based but, increasingly, not, I’ve made 51 paintings to-date.
While the daily tightening of my lens made me acutely aware of the birds in my every day, more importantly, it made me aware of listening. By May, 2019, it was clear that I discerned most birds solely based on sound. The regularity of species, of bird calls mixing, and listening by association all became daily considerations. In October, 2019, while visiting family in Singapore, I became aware of my own forms of listening to indecipherable bird calls and recognized these as significant encounters with non-human animals. In moments like this, I could not list what I was experiencing, but I was perceiving a companion animal by exercising a gesture of being a companion animal. A methodology of companioning effect emerged from this exercise.
The daily bird list is an archive of non-human polyphonic experiences. For me, the lists become scores for future iterations, interpretations, and activations. They also record nonverbal moments in which these species encounter each other, knotting their own colonial, nationalistic, migratory, and, increasingly, post-anthropocentric histories. These lists become scores for musicians, dancers, storytellers; narratives for me to expand into guided tours, bird watching trips, non-human history lectures; laughing workshops; they are code for interpretation, symposia, and public programming; and knots for choreography and movement.
Each word on each painting, each painting itself, and the body of work as a whole presents endless iterative and performative possibilities. Critically, the polyphonic experience is occurring across species and often without the human involved as an actor in that network. Locating ways of listening to these knots and then presenting their entanglements, not to decipher them but to engage with their complexity, is a counter-anthropocentric possibility.
My commitment to being a companion animal requires I, the human, to become critically aware of and responsible to the affective encounter with both the presence and histories of non-human animals. I hope to negotiate this encounter and investigate strategies through which art practices can engage with this effect to mediate a decolonial understanding and offer a counter-anthropocentric possibility for the viewer.
Note: This is an extract of my daily bird list, which lists every bird perceived in October, 2019. During this period of time, I was working in the United States of America, Australia, and Singapore. There are some words consistently occurring across these sites, while other species (and hence sounds) require constant listening and re-listening.
1. House rock monk European blue American turkey double Canada mourning rusty blackbird*
2. Blue house rock Canada monk European common grackle*
3. House blue rock
4. House rock
5. House rock mourning
6. Blue rock house mourning
7. None
8. None
9. Pied rainbow Indian masked common
10. Pied rock Indian common peewee Australasian little rainbow noisy
11. Pied sulphur Noisy white masked Australian Indian Australasian Little Rock
12. Rainbow pied Indian rock white Australian Noisy sulphur
13. Pied masked Australian Noisy rock white silver rainbow welcome common
14. Pied rock sulphur Noisy Australian Australasian rainbow Indian
15. Pied rock rainbow Australasian Australian crested masked spotted sulphur white noisy little silver
16. Common rainbow noisy Indian pied sulphur
17. Indian white Australian rock rainbow
18. Pied rock rainbow Australian silver
19. Rainbow rock noisy pied silver
20. Common rainbow rock silver
21. Pied silver sulphur rainbow spotted noisy Indian
22. Sulphur rainbow Indian rock pied noisy Australian Little Australasian
23. Indian rainbow noisy rock Australasian pied silver
24. Pied rock white little silver noisy Australian
25. None listened **
26. Eurasian Javan
27. None **
28. Rock Javan Eurasian black-naped (oriole - the yellow bird) red (junglefowl) spotted **
29. Spotted Javan Little Rock
30. Unidentified perceived noise** Rock Eurasian Javan
31. Asian Javan honeyeaters look up rock yellow honeyeater look up black red mute **
Fernando do Campo (born in 1987 in Mar del Plata, Argentina) is an artist based in Sydney, where he is a lecturer at the University of New South Wales Faculty of Art and Design. Since 2015, he's produced work as the House Sparrow Society for Humans. Fernando has presented solo exhibitions in Australia and the United States of America, and group exhibitions internationally. He is a Sir General John Monash Foundation Scholar, and has received grants from the Australian Regional Arts Fund, Arts Tasmania, Jan Potter Cultural Trust, Australia Council for the Arts, Create New South Wales, and The New School. Fernando presented a major commission for MONAFOMA Tasmania 2020. He is currently working on an ongoing research project with the Brooklyn Museum, and a solo exhibition commissioned for Contemporary Arts Tasmania 2021.
fernandodocampo.com