Memory of Birds

Installation

Reviews

  • Memory of Birds by Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury ruminates on the traces of violence left buried in bodies and contested lands. ARTnews Italia

Memory of Birds is an interactive sound installation that unfolds among trees in the open space, and is developed in collaboration with a trauma therapist and the migratory pathways of birds. Situated at the intersection of ecology, memory, and political history, the work investigates forms of violence that become embedded within the land itself—violence that is both materially buried in the ground and obscured within collective memory. Through sound, listening, and guided somatic engagement, the installation invites participants to encounter landscapes as living archives that bear the traces of displacement, conflict, extraction, and survival.

Structured as a guided sensory experience, Memory of Birds asks participants to attune to the body as a vessel of memory and forgetting. Rather than preserving testimony as a permanent record, the work foregrounds the fragility and impermanence of remembrance. Conceived as a work that gradually consumes itself, it resists archival permanence and embraces disappearance. Memory of Birds reflects on the limits of memory, the burden of inheritance, and the uncertain ways histories of violence persist within both landscapes and bodies. The work narrates itself to be forgotten.

Credits

  • Concept, Script, Narration Tania El Khoury
  • Structure Design Thena Tak and Ross Adams
  • Music & Sound Design Fadi Tabbal
  • Guided Somatic Experience Coral Franchi LCSW, SEP
  • Mask Design Oscar Gardea
  • Singing Voice Laila Samy
  • Illustration & Graphic Design Haitham Haddad
  • Dramaturgy James Stenhouse
  • Arabic Narration Tania El Khoury and Helena Nassif
  • French Narration Tania El Khoury and Valentine du Peloux
  • Italian Narration Emilia Tiburzi and Carlotta Viscovo
  • Available versions Arabic, English, French, Italian

Commissioned by Bard Fisher Center LAB Common Ground.

Trailer

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