Sing

Debbie Symons has dedicated her practice to ‘witnessing’ disasters unfolding as environmental destruction takes place at a range of speeds (‘glacial’ seemingly now an impossible simile to use). For Sing, Symons undertook a Labverde residency in Manaus, State of Amazonia, Brazil. The Labverde program is designed to develop innovative studies in the cultural field in conjunction with a team of arts, humanities, biology, ecology and natural science specialists, aiming to bridge our incorrect and damaging binary of humankind and nature.

The rainforests of Brazil remain one of the greatest, near mythical bio-diverse environments. Yet, as Symons notes: ‘in 2018, the tropics lost 12 million hectares of tree cover. And in 2019, the tropics lost another 11.9 million hectares of tree cover, equating to losing a football pitch of primary rainforest every six seconds. Rainforests are biodiversity hotspots, with more species found within these niche environments than anywhere else on the planet. Rainforests also capture and store gigatonnes of carbon, which is released as carbon dioxide during deforestation events.’ Whether we live in Amazonia or not, the impacts of this deforestation reach every home.

Travelling through the rainforest, Symons came across ‘the Yellow-rumped Cacique bird and the precarious suspension of their nests hanging over the flooded forests within the Amazon jungle... The nests of this species hang high in the tree canopy… above waters containing predators that are both mysterious and threatening; the piranha, vampire fish and the anaconda.’ Astonishingly, the complex, self-supporting nests are woven by the birds from pliable materials found in the forest and hang from tree branches; intricate architectural structures that draw on the same building techniques as many forms of human architecture. They have existed within sight of predators for millennia, protecting newborn and maturing chicks. However without either trees or materials, these homes are now impossible and the Yellow-rumped Cacique doomed.

In Sing, Symons creates a homage to these nests, floating architectures of a disappearing avian civilisation, using fronds of the African oil palm, one of the crops planted following the clearing of tropical rainforests. Working with scientists who are developing improved methods of oil palm cultivation to decrease deforestation, she achieves what the birds cannot, repurposing the introduced species into an interpretation of a viable native habitat. There is a pathos to these displaced, empty homes; even as they suggest a solution and refuge.
Following her work in Brazil, Symons returned to her home in Melbourne and produced the work for Sing during 2020, as COVID arrived on the world stage. Many who experienced the Melbourne lock down described becoming increasingly aware of the birds living around their homes. Trapped indoors, spending more time looking out of windows, there was a curious inversion of our relationship with birds that catch our attention and indeed affection. Friends shared sound recordings of the dawn chorus as a way of bringing green space back into our daily experience of a claustrophobic urban terrain. Symons too uses birdsong to speak about landscape, with scientific recordings of the Yellow-rumped Cacique and other tropical bird species calls provided by ornithologist Mario Cohn Haft emanating from within the nests. The gallery is alive, with seemingly hidden, or invisible birds speaking to each other.

Of all the senses, sound is often described as the most powerful in terms of its relationship to memory. Dementia patients can respond to songs from their childhood with calm and delight; lovers the world over know a particular song can mean heartbreak or a most treasured moment. Sound is also primal: we are hard-wired to respond to an audio alert even when unconscious, the reason alarm-clocks work.

Symons’ sound recordings are memory, alert and witness all in one. As Agamben makes clear: for the ultimate subject of trauma, those who perish as a result, telling their story is no longer possible. Instead, the ‘witnessing’ necessary for us to learn from history can be achieved through the work of art, where artist and those who witnessed become one. Symons re-speaks the story of these birds, making their voice hers, to remind, warn and share in turn.

As we in turn share in witnessing – an ecology few if any of us have seen; if a story now becoming painfully familiar – it is important that we don’t only wonder and perhaps, grieve. We also need to think. To consider what it is to have a home. To remember our own homes, the places we grew up and whether good or bad, how essential they were to who we are today. But also that they in turn were nested, in a community, society, habitat, politic. The right of all – animal or human – to safety, security and a future.