SYRINXES
Syrinxes is a hyperarchive and a system based listening device of bird songs spanning from five months, between South Morocco and the Netherlands recording birdsongs, radio transmissions, electromagnetic fields and spoken language; meeting conservationists, scientists, musicians and craftspeople; and searching archival collections and digital memory systems. The work sits as a question on the state of cultural memory within a post-colonial context.
Text by Nadine Botha
Syrinxes
Anti-Atlas of Bodies Stuffed with Feathers
A chance encounter between a singing chaffinch, a factory worker’s whistle and the electromagnetic emissions surrounding ASML led Mathis Dabbarh Marsepoil to explore how culture is transmitted across human, technological and more-than-human worlds. Following migratory bird routes from southern Morocco, where his roots lie, to his current home in the Netherlands, Marsepoil spent five months recording birdsong, radio transmissions, electromagnetic fields and spoken language; meeting conservationists, scientists, musicians and craftspeople; and searching archival collections and digital memory systems.
These materials form an immersive installation in which networked signals pass between sculptural bird bodies, sound and electronics, generating an open-ended performance through which visitors move. Bringing together biological, technological and cultural systems of transmission, the installation traces how migration, language and territory carry memory and belonging. It reflects on how colonial legacies in contemporary technology shape what is preserved, what is lost through standardisation or left beyond the archive’s reach.
