SOUND::GENDER::FEMINISM::ACTIVISM
Tokyo: soundwalk and participatory performance, October 2019
CRISAP University of the Arts London/Tokyo University of the Arts Tokyo Japan

Female birdsong has only recently come to the attention of Western science. The songs of female birds have been largely ignored based on the supposition that complex birdsong has evolved through sexual selection, as Darwin noted, and that male birds sing and female birds listen. Recent research challenges this assumption, identifying that the occurrence of female birdsong is frequent and common. 
            This project is a sound/listening walk and participatory choirin Ueno Park, Tokyo, close to the site of the SGFA conference and a place popular with wild birds, in particular the highly intelligent Jungle Crow (Corvus macrorhynchos). A short talk introduces female birdsong and participants are encouraged to listen and speculate that female birdsong underlines an intelligence and agency that suggests birds may sing for reasons other than, or in addition to, the reproductive, including personal pleasure, creativity and other forms of non-functional communication. Given that Jungle Crows are songbirds, who like some other species including bats, dolphins, whales, parrots and ourselves, learn their sounds and language from their parents and can adapt their sounds and learn new ones throughout their lives, this participatory walk and choir proposes that, like us, female Jungle Crows may use their new-found voices to muse, murmur, ponder, utter, speak, discuss, confer, converse, debate, suggest, imply, denote, blurt, cackle, chat and gossip.