songbirds mimic the sound of protest slogans

No justice, no peace. The English version of this sentence, No justice, no peace, sounded all over the streets of American cities in the summer of 2020. It has been the rallying cry of Black Lives Matter activists for years. Now, two years after the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, you hardly hear the words anymore. Although… If you listen closely, you may hear another echo of the slogan on East Lake Street in Minneapolis, the epicenter of the protests. Hear that bird, isn’t it like it’s chanting? Without words, but with the same intonation, the same rhythm. Tu tu tu, tu tu. Tu tu tu, tu tu.

This Minneapolis mockingbird and more activist birds can be heard in the installation Echo Chant by Lotte Geeven. In a dark room of Machinery of Me, in the woods near Arnhem, is a large table with twelve record players in a circle. On each record player is a white gramophone record that glows in the dark. As in a relay race, the record players take turns playing their records. We hear the cawing of an Inca jay on the roof of a hotel in Bogotà, a gray redstart in Hong Kong and a whistling song thrush at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. These are all places where loud and prolonged protests have taken place in recent years.

Protest sounds and sounds of birds that imitate the sounds alternate in the installation. That way you can’t get around it. The call of the song thrush sounds exactly like the Black Lives Matter activists, and in the whistle of the Parisian bird you recognize the whistle of the yellow vests.

At the same time, while listening, you ask yourself: am I not hearing this just because I want to hear it? It is this doubt that is interesting. Echo Chant is set in a slumber region where things seem plausible but cannot be fully explained. What if after a while birds take over our protest sounds? You really want to believe it.

The link Geeven makes between animal sounds and people reminded me of another impressive sound artwork: The Great Animal Orchestra (2016) by Bernie Krause. Krause made sound recordings deep in nature, where animal sounds are not influenced by humans. Using light waves, he shows how each animal, from cricket to puma, occupies its own place in the soundscape. Just like musicians in an orchestra. Krause is all about harmonizing animal sounds with each other, while Geeven lets you experience the harmony of animal and human sounds.

Birdsongs were there long before there were humans, and will probably, hopefully, continue to be heard long after we’re wiped off the face of the earth. Who knows, by then the Black Lives Matter slogan may have been transferred from mockingbird to mockingbird and become part of the regular repertoire.

Fortunately it is not that far yet. Until then, there will still be people who cry out loud and clear for a better world and there will be voices that amplify that sound for a short time, only to be silenced again. That’s how it went with Black Lives Matter: for a while racism was the talk of the town, now it is again one of many topics for most people. Thanks to Lotte Geeven, there is now the comforting thought that the noise from the protests continues to be heard. Not only in the work of people who continue the conversation, but also in the song of the birds that echo their voices.