Tawny Pipit

archive of disappearance

Sol Archer and Giulia Zabarella
2026

Exhibition edit: 12:56
Cinematic Release: 43:57

4:3 UHD 4K
Stereo Audio

Spoken:
Exhibition edit: N/A
Documentary edit: Italian, English, Catalan, French, Spanish

Exploring the dual extinctions of ecosystems and inherited relations to them: Northern Italian, Spanish, and French bird song imitators, or Chioccolatori, adapt their centuries old tradition to produce an archive of critically endangered and regionally extinct migratory bird calls, as they are embodied in co-terminously endangered folk knowledge.

As the sonic signature of the changing seasons becomes hushed under overwhelming environmental pressure, traditional practices of relating between human and other-than-human cultures fade, becoming unmoored folk acts.

Tawny Pipit is an ethnofiction project across film, photography, writing, and music, in collaboration with Giulia Zabarella and practitioners of Chioccolo, in which we are producing an archive both of the sonic life being snuffed out by environmental catastrophe, and a rapidly disappearing regional practice. On mimesis, machismo, idendity, and the passing on of knowledge.

The project is a registration of a dual extinction, of bird species and their songs, and of cultural relations to the non-human world: A celebration; a grieving; a proposition for re-emergence; and a swan song. On mimesis, imitation, and becoming other-than-just human. A registration of avian cultures as they disappear, and a celebration of the performance traditions people across the Mediterranean have used to mediate between human and non-human worlds for centuries, a registration of the hunters “lost intimacy” with “animals' worlds and ways of being in the world.”*

We launched this project on February 28th 2026 at CIAP Vassiviere, France with a film and photography installation, accompanied by performances and workshops from Master Chioccolatore Ettore Scabin.

Publication featuring specially commissioned text from Riccardo Ton and risographed drawings by Giulia Zabarella
Available at CIAP Vassiviere or by email on request.

Featuring

BARN SWALLOW:
Graziano Manganelli

BLACKBIRD:
Ettore Scabin

CETTI’S WARBLER:
Ettore Scabin

COMMON LINNET:
Salvador Aguilella Alegre

HOUSE SPARROW:
Salvador Aguilella Alegre

NIGHTINGALE:
Claudio Pin

YOUNG NIGHTINGALE:
Vincent Bonini

ORTOLAN BUNTING:
Costante “Il Poiana” Biz

REDWING:
Olivier Bonini

YOUNG REDWING:
Vincent Bonini

SKYLARK:
Claudio Pin
Salvador Aguilella Alegre

SONG THRUSH:
Camillo Prosdocimo
Simeon Garcia Silvestre
Olivier Bonini

YOUNG SONG THRUSH:
Vincent Bonini

WOODLARK:
Paolo Pasqualetti

WRYNECK:
Ettore Scabin
Claudio Pin

YELLOWHAMMER
Graziano Manganelli

&

Enrico Berto
Isidro Puertes Deseo
Jean Claude Pinotti

VOICEOVERS:
Stefano
Riccardo Ton
Ettore Scabin

SCIENTIFIC CONSULTATION:
Riccardo Ton,
avian researcher at the University of
Valencia (ES)

installation photography at CIAP Vassiviere courtesy Aurelien Mole

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