This rather peculiar podcast was born in an even stranger workshop. In July 2018, the program Paraíso (In)habitado kicked off “in an abandoned parking lot with access to the Parque de San Isidro and located in front of the Ana María Matute Library” in Carabanchel, as a way of fostering the activation of barely transited spaces in the urban landscape.
One of these public activities became the Paseo Flora y Fauna [Flora and Fauna Walk], with the set aim of, as its name clearly states, exploring the flora and fauna —and especially the ornithology— of the place.
During the length of those more than three hours of expeditions, I was in charge of filming the ornithologist that guided us. Afterward, and thanks to the aid of Campo Adentro, I produced my own workshop. The only requests I made via the technical assistance form were an awning, a table, and some food.
Thus, furnished and drawn together in a circle, we got down to work, in that not-so-improvised picnic, and I began to talk about the people who study the song of birds, in a theoretical excursus that ended up becoming a dialogue from which I filmed all interventions. Afterward, we hovered more firmly over the projected activity: to sing bird songs. That is, rather than listening to the birds sing, singing songs about birds to the birds.
The result was a group podcast that was also a field recording, capable of bringing together the oral, aural, and musical fragments of that beautiful evening we shared. You can listen to it here (in Spanish):
