When I started recording the birds in Santa Cruz this spring, it seemed that they were suddenly everywhere— “pilgrims of the obvious.” And their voices were so various and sweet, against the crushing news — though also relentless. Like walking into a copse in Ireland ten years ago, when I was surrounded by a riotous cacophony of voices, insistent on telling me something, even then. Where did everyone go, all those who have been murdered? How to account for our different positions on this earth? How to communicate across these distances and differences? How to collectivize, without a sovereign?

.The process of catching and re-directing sunlight is a practice of locating oneself in a particular place on the earth, because of the angle and location of the earth’s movement in relation to the sun at that moment and in that place: slippery, evasive, quick, but sense-able. You can see the earth turning. By feeling the physicality of my location, can I paradoxically feel more acutely the physicality of others located at other particular places? Can we sense that we have the earth in common? Sisters Lara and Mandy Sirdah are two Palestinian birdwatchers living in Gaza.

Bringing in the sun is also a recognition of the promise of photosynthesis, free and de-privatised—a promise to transform the world and replace oil pipelines with pipelines of sun.

Thank you to Phil Peters, artist and audio installation specialist, who designed the system for presenting this installation, and spent many hours helping edit.

Thank you also to: Debbie Gould, Wendy Jacob, Dima Mabsout, Lee Chang Ming, Tristan Duke, JM Gaston, James Hicken, Luke Palmer (for his tripod), Andy and Onnie Palmer, the existence of the Feminist Bird Club, Matthias Regan, Kathryn Schaffer, Claire Pentecost and Brian Holmes for the invitation to do something in this beautiful, resonant, and already storied space.