Filip van Dingenen, in collaboration with David Shongo, SUSKEWIET VISIONS

Filip van Dingenen, in collaboration with David Shongo, SUSKEWIET VISIONS, 2023, historical birdcage with wireless speaker, 28x40x21cm, open edition

Suskewiet Visions is a project departing from the folkloristic tradition of Suskewiet, an animal sport practiced in the region of Southwest Flanders in which male finches to compete for the higher number of birdcalls. It observes the serial and particular mathematical markings on black wooden sticks which are traditionally used for counting, and reimagines them as temporal ephemera scores produced along the River Lys as source for a future algorithmic sound composition. The project explores how the protocols of a game in between human and caged birds be a staring point to develop a universal tool to learn and listen differently to our environment, re-contextualising folklore to reveal the potential to harmonise our dominant relation towards the nonhuman. The artwork contains a video documentation on the implementation of sound observations along the River Lys in the region of South-West Flanders and the Congo River in Central Congo.