by Jo Alyson Parker
For protectors of the environment, The Great Silence resonates deeply. In 2014, performance artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla proposed to writer Ted Chiang that he collaborate with them on the video installation. (Chiang, one of the finest speculative fiction writers of our time, may be best known for writing “Story of Your Life,” the basis for the film Arrival.) As Chiang explains, “Their plan was to juxtapose footage of the radio telescope in Arecibo with footage of the endangered Puerto Rican parrots that live in a nearby forest, and they asked if I would write subtitle text . . . , a fable told from the point of view of one of the parrots, ‘a form of interspecies translation.’” Although initially hesitant, Chiang complied, and the resulting collaboration provides a thought-provoking and ultimately touching examination of human aspiration and human heedlessness.
As the 16-minute film unfolds, shots of the mammoth Arecibo telescope arcing slowly in the sky alternate with shots of the highly endangered Puerto Rican parrots flitting through their jungle habitat, their calls providing a lush soundtrack. On the screen appear subtitles, supposed “translations” of the parrot narrator’s parrot language. The parrot’s ability to communicate is integral to the argument of the film. The parrot notes that humans’ “desire to make a connection is so strong that they’ve created an ear capable of hearing across the universe”—the ear being the Arecibo telescope. But, the parrot asks, why aren’t humans “interested in listening to our voices?” After all, “We’re a nonhuman species capable of communicating with them. Aren’t we exactly what humans are looking for?”
The questions echo throughout the film as the parrot contrasts human’s desire to make contact with extraterrestrial species with human’s careless disregard of the other species that reside on this planet, a disregard that has led to numerous extinctions. “The Great Silence,” the parrot points out, is another term for “the Fermi Paradox” (This idea that may be familiar to viewers of the Chinese series Three Body or the American version 3-Body Problem, both based on Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem.) The parrot tells us that the Fermi Paradox posits that “[t]he universe ought to be a cacophony of voices, but instead it is disconcertingly quiet,” possibly because “intelligent species go extinct before they can expand into outer space” or because “intelligent species actively try to conceal their presence, to avoid being targeted by hostile invaders,” The parrot regards this second possibility as “a wise strategy,” for its species “has been driven nearly to extinction by humans” and will likely “die before our time and join The Great Silence.” The poignancy of the species’ plight is heightened as the parrot refers to its “cousin,” the renowned gray parrot Alex, who understood not only words but also concepts such as shapes, colors, and numbers, regularly engaging in a sort of conversation with its human handler. The extinction of the Puerto Rican parrots, our parrot narrator tells us, “doesn’t just mean the loss of a group of birds. . . . It’s the silencing of our voice.” The Great Silence poignantly reminds us of the loss we would face if the parrots’ voices no longer sound through the Puerto Rican forest, and it encourages us in the work we do to ensure a livable planet for all species.
A final note: The parrot narrator speaks of Arecibo as a monument to humanity’s “immense” aspirations: “Any species who can build such a thing must have greatness within them.” In an unintentionally ironic twist, however, the Arecibo telescope spectacularly collapsed in December 2020. It can no longer “hear across the universe”—and soon we may no longer hear the parrots chattering in the nearby forest.
Sources:
The Great Silence premiered in 2014 at the Philadelphia’ Fabric Workshop and Museum. It can be viewed here.
In 2015, Chiang turned the text into a stand-alone short story, which can be found in the collection Exhalation: Stories, Knopf, pp. 231-36. Chiang’s description of the collaboration with Allora & Calzdilla can be found in “Story Notes,” also in Exhalation: Stories, pp. 347-348).