El Gran Silencio is a video installation centered on the world’s largest single-aperture radio telescope, located in Esperanza, Puerto Rico, which sends and receives radio waves from the universe's farthest reaches. The Arecibo Observatory site is also home to the last wild population of critically endangered Puerto Rican parrots, Amazona vittata, inhabiting the surrounding Río Abajo forest.
Allora & Calzadilla collaborated with science fiction writer Ted Chiang to create a subtitled script that uses translation as a tool to reflect on the unbridgeable gaps between living and non-living beings—human, animal, technological, and cosmic. Told in the spirit of a fable, the parrot’s narrative offers a poignant commentary on humanity’s search for extraterrestrial life. It draws on the concept of vocal learning—a rare trait shared by parrots, humans, and a few other species—to explore the nature of voice, ventriloquism, and the vibrations that underlie both speech and the universe itself.