Conversations With Garden Birds

 

Video, Performance 2010

 

Drawing on research from the writings of philosophers John L. Austin and John R. Searle, notably the idea that the utterance of a illocutionary act could be emphasized by a performative act, for example we could utter the words “look over there”, as a illocutionary act but if we add in the physical performative aspect of pointing the utterance becomes emphasized. Conversations with birds is a series of short durational performances that form an exploration into the notion of a speech act being emphasized by a non-verbal performance.

 

An animals utterances are in essence a speech act(or an illocutionary act). All utterances by birds(and all fauna) have a given meaning for example “this is my territory”, or “Warning, Predator”, Through Conversations with birds I attempted to emphasize birds speech acts with my own performative acts.