LOCATION: Transplanted habitat
FIELD DATES: July-August 2018
PROCESSING: Ongoing
RESULT: Installation and booklet

In 2018 we have visited Japan for the first time. Before our departure we coincidentally heard about bright green parakeets in Maebashi, who have been pets once and are now living freely in the town. A similar story we know from Cologne, where this bird is living in a large flock at the river Rhine. We have looked around and noticed: there are also communities in Brussels, London, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, New York, Tokyo – so many very different places. The parakeets did get there as foreign workers on a pet-visa. Now the jobs have ended and they are still here.

Actually, what was that job? And why has it ended? How do they exist in a new living environment which they did not select and with nothing more than their own resources? Our curiosity about these green migrants was reason for contacts in our new environment Maebashi. The parakeet questions often were our human questions.

Over four weeks we have been looking for traces, visiting and talking to places and people. A tweet told us about the parakeets at Soja Shrine. Early in the morning we really did find them there. We returned to this place multiple times looking and listening. From there we took our thoughts with us and into our days in Gunma. Coincidences and the lucky networker Toshihiro Fukinishi shaped the route of our journey. It lead us to Tomoko Anezaki at Gunma Museum of Natural History in Tomioka and we were talking about the principle of migration in animals and plants. To Asakawa Tchikao and Kobayashi Hiroki from The Wild Bird Society Japan in their regional office for Gunma in Takasaki. And we were talking about the observation of birds. To the organic agriculture grounds of Noriko Iwata at Haruna mountain and we were talking about her experiences with birds while farming. During all this we were strangers in the japanese language, therefore Miki Nozaki translated the words to and away from us. How did the parakeets make it here without all this help?

We visited spaces in Maebashi which were pointed out to us. All this time the parakeet questions engaged ourselves in dialogue. The Wakake Honsei Inko became a prism through which we are looking, spreading information like a fan and we can try to perceive the single colours.

Full documentation booklet “A Day With Wakake Honsei Inko”

Funded through the AIR-Programme at ARTS MAEBASHI
Photography of Salon Sittich kindly provided by Kigure Shinya