Birdland and the Anthropocene

Birdland and the Anthropocene   Here we are in Baltimore, famously known as Birdland, and I’d like to think we love all of our birds.  Sports teams are part of our identity, but so is poetry, and a diversity of actual birds that by the nature of their existence keep our ecosystems healthy.  Birds provide pollination, seed dispersal, insect control (and thereby disease control), pest control, and more.  If that isn’t enough incentive to be grateful to them, bird watching is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States.

But consider birds for birds’ sake—they are living dinosaurs, full of beauty and portent, present in every aspect of our culture.  We’ve coevolved with birds and studies suggest that human’s most essential trait—language—is likely derived from our observations of birdsong.     Mostly birds.  That’s this show and my life.  As an artist/curator and volunteer for the bird conservation/wildlife rescue group, Lights Out Baltimore, I’ve dedicated much of the last eight years to advocating for birds.   Birds are in trouble.  They are disappearing.   The silent spring that Rachel Carson warned us about is looming.  The causes include habitat loss, death by free-roaming cats, building collisions—light pollution draws birds into environments full of invisible glass, pesticides, etc. 

In this new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene, natural systems have been affected by human activities and encroachment--evolution, migration, biodiversity, climate, etc.  Fifty percent of birds in the United States are likely imperiled and might disappear within a century. 

I’ve gathered together artists who consider endangered species, extinction, and the postnatural—organisms that have been intentionally altered by humans. Some artists examine ornithology, the scientific study of birds—some play with the methods involved. How do we use the technological advances we’ve made at a cost to the natural world in order to save it?  How do we imitate birds and what does it reveal about our perception of them? How does extinction disclose domination and exploitation in political systems? How are birds as symbols used in these narratives?

I’ve been a dedicated birder for sixteen years.  In the time I’ve spent observing the local habitat, our city, I’ve witnessed the onset of this distressing change. There are fewer birds.

Many of us are in despair at predicted losses. At the same time, there has never been such a swell of interest and scientific inquiry into understanding birds’ physiology, especially their intelligence.   We ask the community to weigh in on these issues. In workshops, Baltimore City students will respond with their own art.  We’ll collect stories from city residents with the app, “Be Here Stories.”  What do birds mean to you?  We’ll engage with local conservation groups.  There will be a bird population decline solution center.     The Peale family included many artists and naturalists, and importantly, their love for these disciplines produced this, the first structure built in the United States dedicated as a museum. Rembrandt Peale established the first gas light company in America and showcased the new technology here. Today, we know that light pollution attracts birds into deadly glass environments resulting in collisions, a leading cause of bird mortality. This inadvertent effect reminds us that humans must be careful of our inventions.

Considering the Peale’s history, can there be a more ideal site for this exhibition? What ties this all together?  Investigation--how the natural world shapes us and how we shape it--absence, threat, counter measures, and a helpful darkness in a world that is fast becoming post-ornithology.

– Lynne Parks, Curator

   

Flowering plants hustle their seeds throughout the landscape by way of animal partners who desire their fruit, as well as the seeds they contain. Birds can eat and pass seeds from a variety of species within a given day, acting as winged couriers for future generations of plants. However, millions of birds die every year when they col- lide with buildings whose windows mirror the surroundings and create a fatal illusion of space, or are attracted to building lights without seeing the impermeable glass at night. If birds die with the seeds that they carry, then those seeds become ends without means, orphaned from their living vehicles. In a vast ecology of interruption, millions of seeds likely never get a chance to try their luck at sprouting.

In Chicago, birthplace of the “skyscraper,” hundreds of birds collide with buildings on a daily basis. The Chicago Bird Collision Monitors (CBCM) work as an all-volunteer group that retrieve fallen birds waylaided by our growing architectural ambitions. Dead birds are brought to the Field Museum of Natural History where they are cat- aloged, skinned, and cleaned at the Bird Lab - the feathers and skeletons becoming part of a comprehensive archive of avian demise. The guts of these birds, however, are usually thrown away together with their stores of seeds - cornucopias of trees, owers, and shrubs that could be. With the help of emeritus collections manager, David Willard, I glean the seeds by dissecting them out of the bird stomachs. The seeds from each individual bird become part of a growing collection of plant-possi- bility spanning a variety of fruit and seed eating species - from sparrows to thrushes, robins to grosbeaks. For each kind of bird a ceramic stoneware pot is made by hand - a makeshift surrogate for the stomach from which the seeds were liberated, the pot is a new vessel in which the seeds are given a chance to germinate; each pot is glazed in a style drawn from the coloration and feathering of the particular.

Andrew Yang is a transdisciplinary artist interweaving across the naturalcultural and biohistorical. His projects have been exhibited from Oklahoma to Yokohama, Chicago to Kassel, including the 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015) and solo exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2016). His writing can be found in journals including Leonardo, Biological Theory, Gastronomica and Antennae. He was a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in and seminar-leader at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s Anthropocene Campus in 2016. He holds a PhD in biol- ogy, an MFA in visual arts, and is Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago + research associate at the Field Museum of Natural History.

Ornithology refers to the scientific study of birds, including their physiology, classification, ecology, and behaviour. Because of their visibility and often colourful appearance, birds are a popular object in both science and visual arts – photography in particular. With their pseudo-scientific approach hunter-collectors De Nooy & Geene defy the borders between these disciplines, adding a dimension that is largely absent is both the study and the imaging of birds: humour. Their classification of bird pictures exhibits a sometimes hilarious outcome of creative and associative thinking, with every section of their book Ornithology opening new perspectives on birds. The index of their book seems to be copied from a reference book on ornithology. But, as in most of their works, they only make use of scientific methods to create an artistic microcosm that resembles its scientific counterpart. Ornithology was winner of the Golden Letter for ‘Best Book Design’ from all over the world.

With photography Anne Geene (Breda, 1983) archives, organizes, interprets and arranges the world around her. She analyses and catalogues this information in a seemingly logic way. Seemingly, because her interpretation of the collected data is essentially a personal and ironic reference to our eagerness to ordering and knowing everything. In her work, the relationship between the photographic image and science is a central theme. She studied photography at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague and graduated in 2010 at Sint Joost, Breda. She concluded her photography studies with a Masters degree in photography at the University of Leiden in 2012. In 2014 she won the ING Unseen Talent Award and her work was selected for several national and international exhibitions and collections. 

Arjan de Nooy (Goes, The Netherlands 1965) studied chemistry and photography. One could say that his work is related to both fields: the scientific and artistic. Using his own as well as found images, he constructs histories, archives, ‘scientific’ theories and other stories. Those works often have a fictional character in which his own role may vary from an art historian to a feminist, from a collector to an ornithologist.

Without habitat there are no nests, without nests there are no eggs, without eggs there are no birds. Where eggs would have been there is only darkness. Where the songs of the air would be heard there is only silence.

In this installation the ground nests of five Maryland birds, all listed as threatened, are roughly replicated using native plants and organic material. The blackened areas within the nests represent the approximates space the eggs would have occupied.

Ashley Kidner is a Baltimore based Land artist. Kidner works mainly in stone, wood, native plants and water, making use of natural materials often found on site. The installations that Kidner creates and documents (with photographs and drawings), often carry an environmental message. These works slowly deteriate, braking down through decay and erosion, while the more permanent materials such as stone and plants remain. Recent work has involved drawing attention to the plight of bees in Maryland through a series of stone and pollinator plant installations. These “Pollinator Hexagons” can be found in Leakin Park (Nature Art in the Park), Lake Roland Park (Art on the Trail) and Montpellier Arts Centre in Laurel. Kidner has also installed a huge vine sculpture at the Adkins Arboretum on the Eastern shore of MD in addition to work shown in this years Fieldwork exhibition at Artscape. Kidner is originally from Norfolk, England, studied Geology at college and currently runs his own landscape business.

In my work, I use abstraction to reflect on fragility, adaptation, and regeneration. My installation and sculpture is improvised on site with construction salvage, studio ephemera, and architectural remnants. The resulting constructions tend to behave like displaced organisms working toward an uneasy symbiosis within a strange environment—not unlike bird populations contending with urban spaces in a changing climate.

Ben Piwowar is a Baltimore-based painter and installation artist. His work has been included in exhibitions at Meyerhoff Gallery in Baltimore, MD, Artspace New Haven in New Haven, CT, the Rice Gallery at McDaniel College in Westminster, MD, VisArts in Rockville, MD and Soho20 Chelsea Gallery in New York, NY. Piwowar received a 2017 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in sculpture and installation and is a finalist for the 2017 Trawick Prize. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Maryland and his MFA from the University of Connecticut.

I’ve made velcro time machines and LED labyrinths, smartphone audio tours, animations, comic books, websites, and animated comic book websites—but it’s not all art. I think it’s vital to take art across the street and introduce it to other disciplines; for the sake of innovation and community, and my own curiosity. I have too much fun dabbling in science, cinema, and literature to wear the artist’s hat all the time. 

When I design interactive projects or experiments, I hope audiences will have transformative experiences without thinking about the traditional roles of art. Incorporating pop culture and digital media makes art more competitive in the age of 24/7 newsfeeds and instant gratification. At the end of the day, I want to capture people’s attention and make a difference. 

Many of my projects feature imagery and language from science fiction—entertaining tropes that underscore my commitment to the genre while making the work more accessible. I’ve dressed like a time-traveling scientist to start conversations on the street, and invented shrinking “micronauts” to engage people with microecology. Science fiction makes connections between the real and the imaginary; weaving allegories that might inflict change upon the world. Behind the winking references and humor in my work, there are always darker themes like climate change, extinction, and post-humanism. In spite of these fears, I want to tell stories and create genuine adventures that are unique to our moment in time.

Benjamin Andrew teaches at the Pennsylvania State University, specializing in interdisciplinary science and digital media courses. He has organized and participated in science/art programs at the SciArt Center and Johns Hopkins University, and thinks STEAM sounds cooler than STEM anyway. Andrew received his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2013, and has exhibited in Baltimore, Washington D.C., New York, and beyond.

“Living on a small swampy lake in Wisconsin all summer I wake up to the cranes’ call and I know the day’s end by their return. Cranes are part of a natural environment that has its own sense of time; they remind me of prehistoric existence because their form and their rituals have remained relatively unchanged for millions of years.”   -- Cathy C. Cook 

The Whooping Crane has been on the endangered species list since 1967, and is the subject of a population recovery program that includes migration training. The Sandhill Crane has been the subject of the most successful recovery program to date, bringing the species’ numbers back from the brink of extinction.

The Cranes in Motion project is the culmination of Cook’s extensive research from 2013 to 2016. While in the field, she and collaborator Paul Dickinson braved freezing temperatures to document thousands of migrating cranes at their refueling stops in Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Maryland, capturing their calls, mating dances, migration patterns, nesting, and other activities. This intermedia project including documentary, poetry, moving images, and sound explores the fascinating dynamics of crane culture and natural history. A selection of elements from Cranes in Motion are in this exhibition: Mimicking Whooper uses state of the art gaming software to provide an opportunity to virtually interact with these birds - to figuratively dance their dance. Through the lens, the photographs enable us to meet the cranes eye to eye, and ponder the magnificent details of evolution’s handiwork. Ultimately, Cook aspires to create an experience that will help connect humans to cranes at a time when their wetland and grassland homes are threatened and their environment compromised, opening the way to a greater understanding and empathy for the complex ecological issues surrounding this ancient species.

As an artist, filmmaker, educator and eco-activist, Cathy Cook has been creating films, animation, poetry films, collages and installations since the early 1980’s.  She has exhibited her award-winning work internationally in both solo and group shows including MOMA, The Whitney Museum, PBS and numerous other venues. In 2001, Cook was awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.  Nature, topical social issues, and poetry have been staples in her creative work. Cook’s Cranes in Motion project, took her to the largest migration locations for Sandhill Cranes and Whooping Cranes. Currently Cook is an Associate Professor in Visual Arts - Cinematic Arts at UMBC. Cook migrates between Baltimore and Wisconsin, where she lives on a small swampy lake with her dog Zippy. They share residence with cranes, loons, eagles, badgers, deer, herons and coyotes.

The Center for PostNatural History is the world’s only museum dedicated to the collection and exposition of life-forms that have been intentionally and heritably altered through domestication, selective breeding, tissue culture or genetic engineering. Founded by Richard Pell in 2008, the Center for PostNatural History operates a permanent museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania which houses such attractions as a genetically modified goat that produces spider silk in its milk,  engineered photosensitive E. coli bacteria, a collection of purebred dog skulls and hundreds of other specimens of postnatural history. It has exhibited in the Wellcome Collection in London, Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, The ZKM in Karlsruhe, The CCCB in Barcelona, and other museums of science and culture throughout Europe and the United States. It has appeared in the pages of National Geographic, Nature Magazine, American Scientist, Popular Science, Forbes and New Scientist. The CPNH has received support from the Rockefeller New Media Fellowship, Creative Capital Fellowship, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, De Waag Society, The Kindle Project and was awarded a 2013 Kavli Fellowship from the National Academy of Science.

Ian Nagoski is an autodidact musicologist and proprietor of Canary Records which has issued over 40 collections of obscure and under appreciated recordings. His research is focused on American immigrants’ musics in the early 20th century and the history of human-bird sound interactions, among other things. He has lectured throughout the US, Europe and the Middle East. An early 20th century recording of a nightingale was selected by Nagoski to be included in the MoonArk project which is set to place a reliquary of human artifacts permanently on the surface of the Moon in the year 2018. He was awarded a Kindle Project Makers Muse Award in 2011.

A traditional silhouette is starkly metaphorical, a literal trace of a human in a relatively fleeting interval of time which no longer exists. I created silhouettes that evoke instant anthropomorphism by using, as subjects, the heads of extinct birds, while including human elements such as hats, hairstyles, and clothing. I became interested in the idea of using cut profiles when I learned of Moses Williams, a well-known African-American silhouettist who was a former slave of Charles Wilson Peale. Williams worked in Peale’s Philadelphia museum after being set free. Rembrandt Peale introduced the first gas street lighting to the United States and founded the first gas company in the Western hemisphere. I think of gaslight and its projecting shadows. It harkens back to the silhouette art form, and even to Indonesian shadow puppetry, and further in time, to the shadows on walls of caves in pre-history during the making of cave paintings. A traced shadow is similar to photography in that it freezes time. These original shadows are gone as are the humans in the work of Moses Williams (and he, himself), but so are the species of these birds. Nothing is left, but vestige.

Chris Siron was born in Washington D.C. at Doctor’s Hospital on Eye Street, N.W. His educational experience includes the Painting and Printmaking curriculum in the Fine Arts Department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. He also completed courses in animation at the Children’s Museum in Washington D.C. and photography at The Corcoran School of the Arts. His collages and photographs have been published in Throttle, Georgetown University’s C.O.R.E., and Pannus Index. In addition to the visual arts, he has contributed soundtracks to animation and film. Chris works at the National Gallery of Art and lives in Baltimore, Maryland. He was awarded a Maryland State Arts Council grant in 2008 for works on paper. In 2015, he created an animation titled Nocturnal Voyage, which addressed bird deaths owing to building collisions. In 2017, his designs for bird-friendly window film were used for windows at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland.

The prehistoric elegance of birds stirs the most primal human responses-flight, longing, desire. Birds have eluded us, inspired us, at once tenacious in their will to survive, and delicate at the mercy of our destructive ways. These works seek to look back at the birds we have lost, and to look forward to what may come-whether it is evolution gone awry or a distorted remembrance. 

Divya Anantharaman is a professional taxidermist and artist based in New York City. Her area of expertise is birds and small mammals. She was the taxidermist in residence at the (now closed) Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn, is currently a board member of the New England Association of Taxidermists, and co-authored the book “Stuffed Animals: A Modern Guide to Taxidermy”. Divya has won awards and honors for her work in both traditional and interpretive taxidermy competitions, including a Best in Show and Best in Category at the 2015 GSTA Show and Competition, a blue ribbon at the 2016 NEAT show, and most recently a second place in the professional division at the 2017 World Taxidermy Championships. Her work has been featured in Breakthrough Magazine (the premiere taxidermy trade publication), and is regularly featured in press as wide and varied as the Science Friday, National Geographic, BBC Science Radio, and hit Discovery/Science Channel TV Show Oddities. Her artwork has been shown at galleries like La Luz de Jesus in LA, Arch Enemy Arts in PA, Rush NYC, and one of her mythical birds is on permanent display in the Chamber of Wonders at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. She began her foray into taxidermy in 2007 as a self taught artist, and eventually received professional training from award winning traditional taxidermists, attending state and national competitions, and networking with local conservationists. She has turned what was once an odd hobby into a professional career. She is passionate about conservation and aims to use taxidermy as a tool for awareness, and regularly volunteers with the Audubon Society and WCS.