Photo: Helen Frosi.

The event engages with the lives of common wild urban birds. It is a participatory event that responds site-specifically to the birds of Ljubljana using written scores. With listening as a key focus and the complexity of the urban as a shared sonic space, the walk will prompt transmission and reception through the fluidity, instability and mobility of voicing and languaging.

Birds are key indicators of the environmental health of any ecosystem. Across the globe, birds are declining in dramatic numbers due to the climate emergency. This emergency takes many forms, but in the main, it affects birds through habitat loss. It can be difficult and challenging to know what to do with such overwhelming information. This event offers audiences a chance to listen; to listen to the birds in their world; to understand that as we walk and listen, we are being watched and listened to by the birds.

Everyone is welcome. The walk is inclusive and friendly, and no performance or singing skills are needed.

Catherine Clover’s multidisciplinary practice addresses communication through voice, language and the interplay between hearing/listening, seeing/reading. Using field recording, digital imaging and the spoken/written word, she explores the fluidity, instability and mobility of language within and across species through a framework of everyday experience.

Expert partner of the project: Birdlife Slovenia, Društvo za opazovanje in proučevanje ptic Slovenije. The soundwalk is part of the VITAL project.