Bird Park Survival Station
conservation site and multispecies art platform
co-creating art with wild living urban birds
about
The Bird Park Survival Station (Bird Park), 2015-ongoing, is a creative reciprocity conservation project built on the roof of my home in Vancouver that provides urban habitat to local wild living birds—fresh water, food, caching and perching features—to help them survive the climate emergency and diminishing wild habitat.
The Bird Park is also a platform for generating art projects in co-creation with the birds.
PROJECTS:
The anthropogenic forces of deforestation, development, climate change, and biodiversity loss have forced many wild animals to adopt and adapt to human cultures and urban infrastructure as habitat. Cities have become multispecies spaces, even refuges for more-than-human life, and this demands an obligation to foster relations of flourishing. The Bird Park is a project that responds to this need.
The Bird Park includes noninvasive cameras and microphones that record the birds’ activities. I analyze the recordings for information about how the birds are using the Bird Park and then adapt and improve the Bird Park based on their needs. First-hand observations, listening to and watching the birds directly, provide information about their seasonal traditions and activities. Using these processes, I’m following the lead of the birds, and this is how the Bird Park manifests and changes over time.
The Bird Park uses processes of creative reciprocity, providing gifts to the birds in the form of habitat, in exchange for their input into emergent art works.
team:
Julie Andreyev and local birds
Simon Overstall, computation
research assistants: Richard Brittain, Cara Jacobsen, Mana Saei, Astrid Dakowicz, Morgan Gilbert
supported by:
2021, Art Apprenticeship Network, Shumka Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship
2018 Internal Research Grant, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, see
associated exhibitions:
– 2025 group exhibition + Crow Stone Tone Poem performance “Near Dwellers as Indwellers”, Both Kinds Project Space, curated by Daphne Plessner, Vancouver, BC, Canada
– 2024 group exhibition “Near Dwellers as Creative Collaborators”, curated by Daphne Plessner and Emily Artinian, Street Road Artist Space, Cochranville, PA.
– 2022 Crow Stone Tone Poem performance by Giorgio Magnanensi, EPIC_Tom++, Vancouver New Music, / Emily Carr University
– 2020 Crow Stone Tone Poem performance: by Giorgio Magnanensi, “Polydimensional scores”, Vancouver New Music
– 2020, online group exhibition “Co-Vid-EO”, hosted by IMPON, curated by Laura Lee Coles.
– 2018, Bird Park playlist Vancouver International Bird Festival, off-site exhibition, Vancouver.
associated publications:
– (forthcoming book chapter) Andreyev, Julie. “Creative Reciprocity with Urban Wild Birds”, for Oxford Handbook of Multispecies Justice (Celermajer, Danielle et al editors). Oxford University Press
– Andreyev, Julie. “Interspecies Listening” and “Multispecies Listening” Kemp-Welch, Hannah (ed.) Listening Glossary. London: Spiral House, 2026.
– Plessner, Daphne. “Ruth K. Burke, Julie Andreyev: Near Dwellers as Creative Collaborators”. The Tree Museum & Street Road, 2024.
– Andreyev, Julie. “Bird Park Survival Station”. Gillieson, Katherine and Jon Hannan, editors. Occasional Papers: Creative Research at Emily Carr. Vancouver: Occasional Press, 2022.
– Andreyev, Julie. Lessons from a Multispecies Art Studio: Uncovering Ecological Understanding & Biophilia Through Creative Reciprocity. Intellect Books, 2021.
– Berland, Jody. Digital Animalities. Toronto: PUBLIC, 2021.
– Andreyev, Julie. “The Bird Park Sessions” essay published in BC Studies No. 208: Winter 2020/21, Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia.
– Leong, Penny. “Other Beings, Julie Andreyev.” Espace 121 Animal Point of View, hiver/winter 2019, Montreal.