Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s “The Great Silence”

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s 16-minute video The Great Silence focuses on what was once the world’s largest single-aperture radio telescope, used by scientists to detect radio waves from outer space. Located at the Arecibo Observatory in Esperanza, Puerto Rico, the site is surrounded by the Rio Abajo Forest, home to the last wild population of the critically endangered Puerto Rican parrot (Amazona vittata). With a script written from the parrots’ perspective, the story chronicles humankind’s determined quest to find other intelligent life. While the search spans the far reaches of outer space, the parrots living just beyond the observatory point out their proximity to humans, with whom they share the rare capability of vocal learning. The parrot storytellers highlight a deep irony: As humans scan for life in space, the parrots face the end of their kind and the subsequent disappearance of their language and traditions—leading to their near extinction, or “great silence.”