Allora & Calzadilla
Thursday, 2 May 2019
Work from The Great Silence.
I was fortunate enough to see The Great Silence tonight at the Contemporary Art Center as part of a film screening with the Mini Microcinema titled “Artist and Animal Pt. 1” that is running in conjunction with the soon-to-open exhibition Creatures curated by Steven Matijcio.
If you are in Cincinnati, the Artist and Animal, Pt. 2 is screening on June 27th and presented by Valentine Umansky.
“The Great Silence focuses on the world’s largest single aperture radio telescope, located in Esperanza (Hope), Puerto Rico, which transmits and captures radio waves to and from the farthest edges of the universe. The site of the Arecibo Observatory is also home to the last remaining wild population of critically endangered Puerto Rican Parrots, Amazona vittata. Allora & Calzadilla collaborated with science fiction author Ted Chiang on a subtitled script about the bird’s observations on humans’ search for life outside this planet, while using the concept of vocal learning—something that both parrots and humans, and few other species have in common—as a source of reflection upon acousmatic voices, ventriloquisms, and the vibrations that form the basis of speech and the universe itself.” – Impakt.nl