Sylvain, Jim & Lily
ph. Amedeo Abello
Sylvain, a studied engineer, grew up in the Alps, where he spent his childhood with animals that are very much part of our culture. However, Lily and Jim, his parrots from Gabon, remind him every day of the notions of otherness, of elsewhere and even of exoticism.
Funny birds
"Christian, my partner and I found Lily in a pet shop under a glass jar, she looked sad, devitalized. We went back four times in a row, we looked at her from a distance and in the end she reacted to our looks. Jim, on the other hand, comes from an association called Parrot in Need. Well, they're not friends, they're territorial, monogamous animals, and therefore very jealous. If I get too involved with Jim, Lily will steal from him or bite me.”
Birds of good fortune
"At first we were clumsy, we didn't know anything, Lily stayed in her cage without moving. Then one morning she said 'cuckoo'. She woke up, she was looking for contact. Parrots can imitate any sound, the creak of a door, the ring of a mobile phone. It's the first time I've had an emotional relationship, repeated over time with this type of exchange, it makes you realise the power we have in common, our shared abilities, I don't know if it's evolution, but in any case it creates communication. In the end, we seek a connection with another living being, it allows us to transcend into the world of the other."
Winging it
"Lily got close to me early on, so naturally Christian was more engaged with Jim.
I think Lily visited me once in my dreams, she was pushing me around it seems. But dreams are not yet our means of communication, contrary to what animists think. On a daily basis, Jim and Lily stay in their cages, which are open, but I regularly take Lily for a walk, people are amazed, they want to touch her. We've lost Lily twice! They are very sociable animals, so they stay in a group, but there is a particular noise, they leave without turning around, so the main task is to teach them to turn around because they have no sense of direction. That's also what having an exotic animal is all about, a wild animal in fact. It's a co-learning process, I don't know if this is domestication? I don't know if that's what domestication is about? It's true, who's taming who?”
