Architecture and the Senses

12.–14.10.2018 | Plasy Monastery, CZ

Seminar, Workshops, Discussion

Agosto Foundation

Miloš Šejn: A Nightingale with a Flat Flight, Path in Translation

I record a moment of the nightingale’s living space. I have entered his house, his home. Reflections of vegetation, overhanging willows, and viburnums on the surface of the water say something of our, yes, perhaps our dialogue. I don’t know what the avian beings truly see and feel, but I am enraptured by the visual impression of this moment. When I wake up early in the morning, I lie on my bed and the branches from the garden stretch in from the window, clouds, the first rays of sun, and birdsong, it’s a perfect situation. Half asleep, loved ones and acquaintances approach, my consciousness is just as much between corporeality as between a dream and the consciousness of the house. I don’t know how the singing birds perceive this moment, and I know even less how long it has been since people have tried to capture this musical stream of speech in their own language – probably since time immemorial. Various languages and dialects hear something different each time. What follows are examples of translations of nightingales from the history of ornithology. And do we hear today at least some of a fragment of the nightingale’s building of a house?