Transcript
2023

Transcript, 2023, drawing, alarm calls of a hundred birds, charcoal from burned giant sequoia trees on paper, triptych, 185 × 450 cm, installation view: Coda, Einspach Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, 2023

The triptych renders the alarm calls of a hundred bird species living in the forests of the Sierra Nevada as waveforms. The drawing was made with charcoal gathered onsite from the remains of burned giant sequoias that had reached ages of 2,000 to 3,000 years. Between 2011 and 2020, eighty-five percent of the dense, old forests of the Sierra Nevada were destroyed or severely thinned. Fourteen thousand sequoia trees, many thousands of years old, have recently burned. There are no data on the billions of other plants and animals that perished.

In the aftermath of these megafires, scientific observations indicate that regional bird communities have shifted dramatically, with some species vanishing locally. Moreover, the giant sequoia’s unique fire-resilience strategies, such as thick insulating bark and serotinous cones, are proving insufficient in the face of the unprecedented frequency and intensity of human-driven climate change. Trees that are centuries to millennia old build complex habitat structure over time: hundreds of cavities, bark fissures, dead branch stubs, and rot pockets that, decade after decade, serve as serial nesting and roosting sites for shifting bird assemblages (cavity nesters, woodpeckers, owls). Over its lifespan, a single giant sequoia sustains well over a hundred bird species, tens of thousands of invertebrates and fungi, plus lichens and epiphytic mosses, while its trunk and rhizosphere shelter a diverse soil biota. The loss of this accumulated “ecological memory” therefore produces a disproportionately large, community-level loss across the entire forest network.

Kings Canyon and Transcript, 2023, installation view: Coda, Einspach Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, 2023

Transcript, 2023, charcoal remains of burnt giant sequoia trees on paper, triptych, 185 × 450 cm, detail

Transcript, 2023, drawing, alarm calls of hundred birds, charcoal remains of burnt giant sequoia trees on paper, triptych, 185 × 450 cm, detail

“Tamás Dezső’s work focuses on the Sierra Nevada, a landscape scarred by California’s forest fires. In this triptych he transcribes the alarm calls of one hundred bird species, using charcoal gathered on site from the remains of giant sequoia trees that had lived for millennia. In this sense, the drawing is written with what remains of the trees; words such as “corpse” or “dead body” are unusual beyond human contexts, yet they convey the gravity of the loss. Dezső commits to paper calls that in many cases may no longer be heard, since the fires reached the birds with astonishing speed. He first renders the voices as waveforms with software, then traces them by hand, creating a personal, sensory relationship with each individual call.” Text by György Cséka, curator