Pishing in the Archive
Single-channel HD video, colour, stereo, 14:06 minutes, 2021
Production and Direction: Jessie English, Peter Moses, Jared Watson / Editor: Maya Mulvey-Santa / Colour: Julien Chichignoud / Sound: Bob Scott
Pishing in the Archive is the culmination of a research relationship between the artist and the Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, and Brooklyn Museum, NY, since 2015 investigating the history of house sparrows in the Americas. Located at the highest point in Brooklyn and spanning 478 acres (193.4 hectares), the Green-Wood Cemetery is a major migratory bird habitat and birdwatchers’ haven. It is also the site of the first successful introduction of house sparrows into the Americas in 1857.
In Pishing in the Archive we see Fernando do Campo redeploying pishing (a noise that birdwatchers make in the field to lure birds) as a form of cross-species communication through which to listen and respond to the sparrows’ history in the archive of the Green-Wood Cemetery. Borrowing a technique do Campo learnt from human birdwatchers amongst the Cemetery’s tombstones, Pishing in the Archive suggests a need for cross-species listening, and new ways of thinking, relating and communicating with non-human companions.
