Artists showcase Green-Wood Cemetery’s Monk Parakeets

This month, artist duo Shanzhai Lyric finished up a yearlong residency at Green-Wood Cemetery that centers on the Monk Parakeet colony whose massive nest clings to the middle spire of the Gothic Revival entryway at 25th Street. Now they are looking ahead to future projects at the cemetery involving the bright green and yellow birds.

Inspired by New York City’s immigrant street vending culture, artists Ming Lin and Alex Tatarsky—both born and raised in the city—formed Shanzhai Lyric in 2015 to document what they call “poetry garments”: bootleg or counterfeit T-shirts, mostly made in China, and sold worldwide, that bear idiosyncratic, non-standard English text creating what Lin describes as “a long poem that is worn across many bodies and landscapes.” Their work has evolved into an investigation of all things counterfeit (“shanzhai” in Chinese). Monk parakeets—also called Quaker parrots, and known for their mimicry—are the latest subject of their wide-ranging inquiries into imitation.

The Sunset Post caught up with Lin (who lives in Sunset Park) and Tatarsky in late November at the cemetery’s Fort Hamilton Gatehouse, where they had a studio and were presenting an installation showcasing their explorations. “What we like to do,” Tatarsky said, “is create situations that allow us to have conversations with people.”

Entering the studio, visitors were met with a mix of parrot-related objects and images; books about birds, piracy, linguistics, and economics; knock-off designer bags; and countless other artifacts. It was not so much a work of art to be contemplated, as an invitation to peruse and draw connections between the assembled items, which raised questions about concepts like “real” and “fake,” “original” and “copy,” and—in reference to the parakeets, a South American species that first established wild colonies in New York City in the 1960s—“native” and “invasive.”

While non-native parakeets in some parts of the world are viewed as pests, and targeted by culling programs, the Green-Wood colony is accepted as part of the local ecosystem. Recently, Lin and Tatarsky spoke with the custodian of the archway where the parakeets live. A Sunset Park native, he told them he has been working at Green-Wood for forty years and that he and the birds keep the same schedule: waking up early, feeding themselves and their children, then starting the day’s construction projects—which for the birds means collecting sticks and working on their elaborate nest.

“That kind of beautiful reflective language about cross-species kinship between humans and birds, shared rhythms, shared values, making a home in a new land,” Tatarsky said, “becomes a way to talk about bigger issues around immigration and diaspora and what a safe home feels like.”

Through their research, Lin and Tatarsky learned that the Monk Parakeets are not the first foreign species to take up year-round residence in the cemetery. House Sparrows, now ubiquitous in the city, were introduced to Green-Wood from England in the 1850s, ostensibly to deal with an insect problem. But, Lin said, they were also brought to make British residents of Brooklyn feel at home, adding that “the birds were welcomed with purpose-built sparrow hotels.”

In contrast, the lore about the parakeets’ arrival in the city centers on escape: pets flying the coop or exotics bound for the zoo busting out of their cargo box at JFK. “Escaped parrots symbolize something for people about bursting free,” Tatarsky said. “About disregarding boundaries, insisting on being wild, insisting on being free.”

Leading up to their installation, Shanzhai Lyric organized several other events last year, including a birdwatching walk with Green-Wood’s resident bird guide, Rob Jett, focusing on the parakeets. For Lin and Tatarsky, observing and sharing space with the birds and talking to birders changed their thinking about their project.

“Initially, with our interest in language and poetry,” Lin said, “we wanted to have a performance for the parrots that maybe also imparts some poetry to the parrots.” As a feral community, the birds have not been significantly exposed to human language like a pet parrot would be, and Lin and Tatarsky were excited by the expressive possibilities of teaching them words and phrases.

But in the wild, Monk parakeets’ mimicry is not focused on other species—not even other birds (on a walk in Green-Wood, it’s the mimicry of Northern Mockingbirds that dominates the airwaves.) Instead, they use this skill for social purposes within their large and complex communities, for instance learning individual “names” for themselves and their family members, which helps them identify each other in the colony’s cacophony of squawks. And though they are best known as copycats, they have been shown to have, like humans, unique “voice prints,” or vocal tones.

Lin said they soon found themselves asking, “Why do we want to teach them? We want to learn from them.” Tatarsky added, “Even if we don’t understand the meaning, we want to really appreciate the rhythms of their song.”

To that end, they are working on a new project at Green-Wood to coincide with the cemetery’s spring opening of the Green-House–a welcome center, mini-museum, and community space. Shanzhai Lyric are envisioning a reflection room in the gatehouse below the parakeets’ nests where visitors could listen to the sounds of the parakeets piped in via ear trumpet.

But they aren’t giving up entirely on sharing human language with the birds. Referring to the ear trumpet, Lin says, “Maybe you could also speak into it.”