North to South and Back: flights, flood fills and sticks

20 channel, 24 speaker, sound installation
Locke Surls Center for Art and Nature, TX 2023
Part of A Gift From The Bower

Lina Dib’s new multi-channel sound installation is part of a series of installations that focus on movement and migration. The choreographed sounds dance around the Splendora studio in conversation with Surls’ sculptures. North to South and Back: flights, flood fills and sticks is composed primarily of bird sounds from species that migrate yearly throughout the region. The compositions that make up this piece also include bird sounds made by human immigrants to Houston, such as the artist herself. Together, the traveling birds and humans create a call and response. Acting as a ghost in the system and a sentinel for the future, the song of an extinct Kauai OO bird joins the choruses of migrating birds and humans. North to South and Back: flights, flood fills and sticks points to the forces that drive migration and highlights ways that life here is marked by, and even sustained by, movement.

Collaborating writer: Elizabeth Cummins Munoz, “Presente”

Special thanks to the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Taylor Knapps, Daniela Antelo, Siddharth Bharadwaj, Rebecca Novak, Jibin Philip, Josan Pinto and to the other participants for contributing sounds and voices. Special thanks to Taylor Knapps, Roberto Perez and Ludivine Soares for help with install. And to the organizers and artists from A Gift From The Bower.

“DIB’S PIECE IS JUST ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE FULL CYCLE THAT THIS SHOW REPRESENTS — OF ART, OF OUR LIVES, AND OF NATURE. IN A WORLD WHERE THE SUSTAINABILITY OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE IMMINENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE ARE REGULAR CONVERSATIONS, IT HAS BECOME INHERENTLY POLITICAL TO DO AN EXHIBITION SUCH AS THIS ONE. EVEN THOUGH THE LION’S SHARE OF THE ARTWORK IN THE SHOW ISN’T EXPLICITLY TAKING SIDES, ANYTHING ARGUING FOR THE PRECARITY, BEAUTY, AND WORTHINESS OF THE WORLD AROUND US IS A REMINDER THAT LIFE, AND NOT ART, IS WHAT’S TRULY IMPORTANT. IT IS BOTH POIGNANT AND REWARDING TO THINK OF THIS AS YOU’RE SURROUNDED BY SMART SCULPTURES AND TAKING IN THE ANOMALOUS WOODS THAT MAKE UP EAST TEXAS.” – BRANDON ZECH IN GLASSTIRE