“Minor” Ornithologies

This podcast, accompanying Laia Estruch’s performance project for TBA21 on st_age, is hosted by curator, writer, and lifelong birder Max Andrews. It takes flight into the realm of birds, looking at politics and practices that disrupt dominant historical narratives and exceed scientific and cultural boundaries. Alex Holt is a spokesperson for Bird Names for Birds, a movement to decolonise bird names, and Hollis Taylor is a zoömusicologist specializing in birdsong. Through their perspectives we glimpse new and speculative kinds of human–bird narratives; what Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin have described as “minor ornithologies.”  Credits: Contributors: Alex Holt and Hollis Taylor Conducted by Max Andrews Audio Clips Credits: PIED BUTCHERBIRD SINGING. “Wordsworth” abandons formal song with a coda of mimicry, recorded 28 September 2007 on Wordsworth Road, N Queensland at 4:10am. © Hollis Taylor / piedbutcherbird.net SUPERB LYREBIRD SINGING. Audio clip #5: Mimicry of birdsong and two flute phrases from a “flute lyrebird” recorded at Enfield State Forest (130 kilometres from Allan’s Water) at 6:53 a.m. on 16 June 2013 by Hollis Taylor. © Hollis Taylor / flutelyrebird.com ------ The concept of "Minor Ornithology" was coined by Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin in 2013 and is their title of an ongoing series of multidisciplinary collaborations within their curatorial framework Reassembling the Natural / reassemblingnature.org and their edited publication, These Birds of Temptation (K. Verlag & Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2021).

Om Podcasten

TBA21 on st_age is TBA21’s research and commissioning digital space. Based on long-term relationships of trust, it reaches out to bring a multiplicity of voices and contexts into conversation, supporting artist’s needs throughout both research and practice. TBA21 on st_age focuses on environmental and social contemporary artistic practices, and presents video, animation, sound, and text works, as well as projects specifically designed to be experienced online. These are accompanied by a series of contextual materials, which make both the work and the research behind it accessible to a broader audience. These materials include artist-curator conversations, editorial podcasts, research clusters, and calls to actions, as well as the backst_age series, which connects the different projects through conversations, video glossaries, and curated views. All featured works remain the property of the artists and authors.