Allora & Calzadilla 'El gran silencio' at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain

6 March 2025

Until 1 June, La Casa Encendida presents El gran silencio a video installation by Allora & Calzadilla. Through a wide-ranging exploration of sound, the film examines the irreducible relationships between the living and the non-living, the human and the animal, and the terrestrial and the cosmic.

The Great Silence focuses on the Arecibo Observatory, the world's largest single aperture radio telescope, located in Esperanza, Puerto Rico, which transmits and captures radio waves to and from the farthest edges of the universe. The site is also home to the last wild population of critically endangered Puerto Rican parrots, amazona vittata, which have their habitat in the surrounding Rio Abajo forest.

Visual artist duo Allora & Calzadilla collaborated with science fiction author Ted Chiang on a subtitled script that explores translation as a device for tracing and reflecting on the irreducible gaps between living and non-living. In the spirit of a fable, the subtitled story presents the bird’s observations of humans’ search for life beyond this planet, while using the concept of vocal learning—something that both parrots and humans, and few other species, have in common—as a source of reflection on the acoustic voices, ventriloquism, and vibrations that form the basis of speech and the universe itself.

Find out more via La Casa Encendida.

Image: Allora & Calzadilla, The Great Silence, 2014, Three-channel HD video installation © Allora & Calzadilla, Courtesy Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris