sparrow bush as radical pedagogy

In order to grasp this fleeting object, which is not exactly an object, it is therefore necessary to situate oneself simultaneously inside and outside.

[Henri Lefebvre*]

sparrow bushes are a radical pedagogy in themselves, you think

you re listening to the yard at cambria road. a lot of sparrows arrived in the last days, just as M and S saw sparrows in another tree

they sit near the top fo the trea [sic], ebullient – simmering with energies, which sometimes boil over. there is also a crunching sound as of some animal cutting through fibre with its teeth. deep sustained air freight with turbo highs. distant construction as of the sound of nail being wrenched out but deeper, harder, heavier. the sense of a sound which close up must be very loud. the sparrow bush passes through a quiet period, with occasional contact calls

to study the sparrow bushes of an area, you open a microphone, you walk from place to place, you become alert to the way they sit in the urban landscape as gathering points. they point on one hand to the way the city is in flux, pursuing profitability, ironing out unused spaces. the sparrows have concentrated. their numbers are down. they are not a ubiquitous feature of London as they are reported to have been [Hudson]. the squirrel is maybe just by the right microphone. they select certain bushes which are dense, sometimes thorny, where they have protection from cats and hawks. most of all they have shelter from development. they occupy those bushes over many years, just as they occupy their nests over many years.

24 AUG 2023 09:55:20

how to study them.

another plane. the quality of the sound of the planes seems quite specific, perhaps modified by cloud cover – off white to grey. the sound is thick, it seems, the centre frequencies filled out as if stuffed, while the mechanical parts of the engine are prominent, it seems: whirring of some element – unless you are hearing construction and aircraft sounds sandwiched together. pushed towards the right. occcasional high sounds with repeat, as when you drop a long steel rod onto a hard surface. a series of shocks go out. but the engines themselves are heard distinctively, as if x-rayed. you hear a strong buzzing from each engine as it passes over, as of a clock. hearing planes as assemblies of rotary parts reminds you of their basic construction. they are propeller driven, you think. shooting air out the back of the engine to create an opposite drive forward is the classic mode of operation of the jet engine, you think, but you are hearing the propellers in low to mid allying with some resonant frequency of the air, you think, what can it be in resonating sympathy with except the air? as if the air is in a particular state

the study of sparrow bushes is linked to the study of jet propulsion engines, you think. that is a new [/old] branch of study. the sparrow bush sits at the centre of disciplines as it sits at the centre of urban architectures, infrastructure, transit routes, development processes, roads, housing, open space [, DIY ornithologies]. another plane: highs descending, the middle buzzing then smoothing, then stabilizing in a high mid zone and diminishing. all unseen these machine are moving through the airspace from behind your head to away in front. a magpie lands [ed] on a chimney, then is gone. the 3 chimneys - plane - retain[s] some trace perhaps of its landing and leaving. it appears on an aerial to the right. wasps flying into the cavity in the roof void. the air serves, in this way, as the negative space of the exhibition, as those curators were saying at EMPAC. air time, you can say is the negative space of urban development – its narratocracies, – the way it stages itself. it's a slave society, the taxi driver said on the way back from horsham as you were coming back from knepp. it's dead. there s nothing but work. he gestured at the dark lanes, the hidden country. geese and other waterfowl were making sounds around you as you were installing a new splitter at knepp. the right channel of the hydrophone was noisy. M was listening before going to sleep in berlin. you were balancing on the willow over the water. soon you will need boots to get out to the streambox - the water levels are coming up the beavers have young, you learned. the first beavers to breed in sussex in 500 years [knepp tweeted].

how the sparrow bush is studied defines what it will be. the equipment, the methods and who is doing the study and how. you were going to say the work, the work of study. who is doing the work. plane like a lawnmower, then deepening, then a high note comes in the way a table saw. then mid to lows. if something around the microphones is in resonance with parts of the engines as they go over. the hen clacking. or if the air itself is the resonant body, which is not homogeneous or constant. this plane is further left. you hear it mainly in the left, then whistling the way a rocket, then centring. now centre it moves right. the streambox is angled. its ears protrude in the form of cable glands covered in fur. you brought in a box where one channel had the fur torn almost all off on one side. this one is greyish in tone – grey to off-white, smoother, now acquiring a deep modulation in the L, which comes and goes. the sounds of the planes are constant, its a dizzying passage – here again from the L. moving in quite swiftly, you anticipate the fall in tone, the turbos, the fade. there is not a moment of quiet where the air is emptied. in the quieter sections, the sparrow bush returns, full of birds chipping and squeaking. these birds sit in the sound field and it goes through them as it goes through you but differently. whether the sounds pass through their bones, the hollows in the avian bones, their skeletons, the way sound waves pass through cellophane? with less alterating [ion] than passing through something thicker and more massive. the yard is full of skeletons of different animals. you and p are in the house. birds, cats and amphibians are in holes in the yard. holes in soil or vegeta[t]ion. insects are quietly present. rodents move through the trees. the sparrow bush contains these dynamics – it dramatizes [more: stages. explicates. reveals] them through its performances -– it articulates them. a woodpigeon is seem [n] flying right to left out of sight. a crash of wood or metal, which could be from the construction site, is heard up close bouncing off a nearby object.

as anti-monument, the yard stream conveys a sense of impossible contacts. it brings you into contact/contagion with the surroundings. it sits beside and among sparrows and others. it accompanies them and it accompanies the listener in time as time is in the yard. whether chopped into thinnest fragments pasted, frothed, whipped, or opening and closing as in- and out-takes of breaths of different organisms, whether spread the way Akira Kurosawa instructed all those reeds to be coated with gold paint in that elaborate section that was cut from Ran. spread like fat, or falling into flakes and granules. shaken off feathers. a passage of fluttering collects. the wire mesh rings slightly. a big takeoff of wings beating, a disturbance of sparrows or starlings you can t tell. plane. [plain.] somebody drops a metal utensil like falling on an enamel dish. unlikely. quick[ly] glance out. hanging lime leaves. hanging seed pods a lighter green. occasional brown dark branches. an engine comes down herne hill and an engine passes over. the sky has opened slightly – with an area of blue. now much thicker the plane is ploughing, digging in. you feel the wake as the blades pull and the machine is drawn forward. the woodpigeon appears in the soundworld – quite feintly – then some people talking in measured tones. their throats are quite relaxed and sounds come easily out into the surrounding atmosphere over quite a broad range, a male voice, maybe two, a woman's voice, perhaps. a difference in timbre more than pitch, perhaps. if at all. quite varied pitches, likely another language is being used. the plane drowns them entirely while bird calls continue, nearer the microphone but also pitched higher, in a tactical niche. voices coming back as the plane fades toward heathrow. discussion slightly reverberating, as if they could be standing in an open alcove formed by the rear walls of a house. a door bangs closed and it also registers a thicker bass than a bare door. a mere bare door in a catalogue. a piercing call then a magpie rattling. tits. the yard bristles as if hairs all over it were each miced up, conveying a dense plurality of channels. imagining a mixing desk in a lab, such as at the university of hull which RM showed you, you have the sense of a great simplification and reduction – drop.
the steam drops, then returns, sounding slightly different, you think. you listen for the clockwork, the rotary mechanisms in the jets sounding like ratchets and freewheels. a power saw appears. all these agencies are moving back and forth. a plenitude and plurality characterise the soundworld even in its radically impoverished state. severely reduced and damaged on its last legs, the area pulses and rubs against itself, creating a sense of urgency and potential
when an animal comes running over the mesh through the zone of the transmitter, it
drop
these short breaks are also part of the structure of the yard, the situation
deep plane
as if the field was inverted, the planes can be imagined digging their propellers into a thick rich medium, getting purchase in there to pull themselves forward the way screws, augers or helical pilings can be driven into metal, wood or clay these materials undergo a kind of alternate melting and hardening as the bit encounters them, as it heats them drop
the periodic drops in the stream create momentary lacunae, aporias, catches
snags – the way the hem of lady macbeth is described getting caught on a nail or splinter in the stage, creating a sense of real drama [pathognomy of performance – SB] an alarm goes off. meet with Natalia and Valeria. meet with M. the sky is opening, you can see. blue expanding – drop
on return, the pwer tool is masked by a plane, then it does come back
the whole yard is over stuffed, you think – it can barely hold together. it does not fully hang together, as if it has been cut open then hastily sewn together. you can t hear the sparrows, whether masked, silent or other. distances fold and twist. you can imagine a kind of super slow motion wreck taking place over the duration you have been here. your can equally imagine processes of recuperation or repair. this cut, unresolved quality can be called drop
can be linked to kinds of criticality, albeit awash with all kinds of random feelings resistances and tendencies – leanings in all directions.
it can be called a study or studies of ephemeral objects or lives
at a push

radical pedagogies
inter alia


11:09:51

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Credits / References

[*] Lefebvre, Henri: Rhythmanalysis – Space, time and everyday life. Trans Stuart Elden, Gerald Moore. Editions Syllepse Paris 1992 / Bloomsbury London 2022. Ch3 p37.