and:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1zmfTr2d4c
(they won't let me embed the second one for some reason)
So many aspects of the bird's behavior are worth reflecting on. For me as an artist, the fact that here we have a bird who obviously has a well-developed sense of aesthetics, who arranges colors according to something like personal taste for a fellow bird to judge according to its personal taste, and for no other practical reason than to win over that other bird, is wonderful to be aware of.
Now, of course, the obvious discussion we could have here is whether this bird makes art or not (being an animal, God beware!), but that seems too obvious, so let's not have that discussion. It would just lead to a condescending animal vs. human conversation. There's no use in that. We are all fellow species, and we do what feels essential to us, as told by our instincts. We as humans simply have to deal with all the extra complications and confusions our super-brain confronts us with, but essentially we act out our nature. That's why I make art, anyways - out of instinctive reasons rather than calculated ones. Looking at the Bowerbird's care and love for his cause basically reassures me in my own endeavors.
Now, I've always had a strong passion for birds, been an avid birder for a big part of my life, and there are many ways I've tried to connect with them through my art. I've painted birds, I've used bird song in sound collages and videos, and last year I made a sculpture about the Shrike and its habit of storing prey on the thorns of plants and barbed wire. The idea of making an installation about the Bowerbird's garden had been on my mind for a while.
Let me switch over to something completely different for a while: The Berlin Wall - because it's the key to the other strong, defining interest of mine apart from nature: history, memory.
I was born in 1982. I was seven and lived in Berlin when the wall fell, which makes it one of my earliest memories. I consider the events of 1989 - 1990 to be among the most important, and most touching, in human history: The whole world order changed, a power system which had defined the last forty years, collapsed. And it all happened in my city, peacefully, as an effort and triumph of the human spirit in a way that I'm afraid I won't see again in my lifetime.
My family and I went into town a lot in the weeks after November 9th, 1989, to where the wall skeleton was on display like a dead whale, with countless "Mauerspechte" ("Wall-woodpeckers") hacking and chiseling away at it, while the east German soldiers were still patrolling the other side, for the lack of having received orders to do otherwise.
It was cold, drab and wet, with white, overcast skies. Berlin was pale and unsaturated, and in my memory it couldn't have been any more beautiful. You could see your breath and hear the wet pebbles crunch under your shoe. Here's how it was:
Recalling the old Berlin makes me about as nostalgic as I get. That's why I think Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire" is the greatest film of them all:
Well, we collected numerous wall pieces during those months that are now seem so far away. Several bags stored away somewhere in a 2010 basement in Germany. One small bag containing seven pieces, however, has been here in Florida with me, and of course I wanted to use them in some way for an artwork.
I was aware of the countless traps I could've fallen into. It is extremely hard to make a piece of art about the Berlin Wall, because the topic is so loaded with historic weight and we internalized the imagery so much that it's very easy to become pathetic or too obvious (good rule of thumb: Never do the most obvious thing, avoid things that are too easy. Search for the extra layer you might have overlooked).
The solution took me a while to figure out, but then it came to me:
The male Bowerbird and his display would be the catalyzing feature to help me strip the wall pieces of their inherent, 20 year old pathos. He would use them, not caring about their story, and they would end up being one of many colorful elements in his garden. The bird and the people who built the wall would that way share their building material, and I could call the installation "Things We Build". The viewer's mind could go from there.
It would be the most unlikely and unexpected way to give new meaning to these pieces, planting them in an imaginary Australian rainforest, giving them into the trustworthy hands of a builder who knows better than to build a structure meant to violently divide.
This is how this latest installation came about.
P.
Phil,
ReplyDeleteI've been meaning to give you a post about this piece from your exhibit last fall (and yes, you know I find your wood pieces amazing, too).
I liked coming into this space every day I came to school, to check on the bower, the flowers slightly losing their color, perhaps some slight evidence of rearrangement (though, I'm sure that was just my faulty memory). What most impressed me, though, was how it was so beholden to the bower bird, not just a copy with your reconstruction, but a rather humble and admirable admission on your part, adopting something avian in your perspective. I like the vanity of it (and here I am thinking of the bird, too), all for the sake of display, of alluring, but it's also something deeply idiosyncratic: why this plant? this piece of string? this glass?
The inclusion of the Berlin Wall fragments were especially moving to me, too. Something that's really only concrete, another kind of construct, but also something with great weight, something beyond pretty (which I adore because the piece is about celebrating prettiness, too).
Can't wait for you to get back to Fort Myers!