#focus - 25 May for early birds!
On the 25th of May we gather at de Koer at 07:00 am for a walk towards a real “finch sitting” competition in Ghent. It is an hour and a half walk so make sure you are prepared for that. We organize this walk to see this old sport and talk about The Placing which is organized in October.
The Placing is a collaborative sound work organized by de koer in Ghent. They ask the people who live in the Brugse Poort to play the sound of a bird that suits their house in a way that you can hear it outside in the streets. For one hour on Saturday 5 & Sunday 6 October 2019 the streets will be filled with a poetry of birds sounds.
The Placing is inspired by 'finch sitting' which is part of traditional Flemish culture and shortly pronounced in Flemish as 'zetting' which means 'placing'. In a contest, a row of small cages, each housing a finch, is lined up along a street. Every time a bird sings a correct song ending with "suskewiet" a mark in chalk is made on a long wooden stick. In the Brugse Poort there used to be 'finch sittings' on the Groendreef and the Leiekaai.
The video below shows how it works and is made available by Huis van Alijn for the occasion of De Zetting, organized by de Koer.
Location: Meibloemstraat 86, 9000 Gent, Belgium
https://dekoer.be/dezetting/