Song of a Bird (S.O.A.B.) is an ongoing investigation, which has, to date, comprised live performances, an audio-visual installation and a continuing contribution to a repository of cultural practice. It is the fruit of a collaboration between the artist and his father and a micro-community of Maltese bird trappers. 

Each spring and autumn, during the birds’ migratory seasons, the namra takes hold of around 4000 Maltese trappers who long to sit in nature at dawn waiting for the songbirds. ‘Namra’ is a Maltese word best described as “a lifelong passion”; “a folly that appears all but incomprehensible to the casual observer”.

Namra is believed to be inherited.

I began by documenting my father’s ability to mimic bird songs. He belongs to a community of bird trappers in Malta and Gozo. I seek to create an archive of their community and identify occasions where I could motivate them to exchange their embodied memories through performance.