Portland Field Guide
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FIELD GUIDE FRITZ HAEG’S ANIMAL ESTATES REGIONAL MODEL HOMES 5.0 PORTLAND, OREGON 5 . N 0 O P G O RE RTLAND, O ANIMAL ESTATES 5.0 PORTLAND, OREGON DOUGLAS F. COOLEY MEMORIAL ART GALLERY REED COLLEGE 26 AUGUST–5 OCTOBER 2008 FRITZ HAEG 04 INTRODUCTION 10 IN LIVABLE CITIES IS FRITZ HAEG PRESERVATION OF THE WILD MIKE HOUCK 06 BUILD A BETTER SNAG! 14 SNAGS AND LOGS STEPHANIE SNYDER CHARLOTTE CORKRAN ANIMAL CLIENTS 18 CLIENT 5.1 34 CLIENT 5.5 VAUX’S SWIFT NORTHWESTERN GARTER SNAKE CHAETURA VAUXI THAMNOPHIS SIRTALIS TETRATAENIA CONTENTS BOB SALLINGER TIERRA CURRY 2 2 CLIENT 5.2 38 CLIENT 5.6 WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH ORANGE-RUMPED BUMBLEBEE SITTA CAROLINENSIS BOMBUS MELANOPYGUS CHARLOTTE CORKRAN CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL 26 CLIENT 5.3 42 CLIENT 5.7 OLIVE-SIDED FLYCATCHER SNAIL-EATING GROUND BEETLE CONTOPUS COOPERI SCAPHINOTUS ANGULATUS CHARLOTTE CORKRAN CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL 30 CLIENT 5.4 SILVER-HAIRED BAT LASIONYCTERIS NOCTIVAGANS CHARLOTTE CORKRAN 46 FIELD NOTES 48 CREDITS CLIENT 5.1 VAUX’S SWIFT CHAETURA VAUXI The ongoing Animal Estates lished between the man-made and the wild. initiative creates dwellings for Animals and their habitats are woven back into our cities, strip malls, garages, offi ce parks, animals that have been displaced freeways, backyards, parking lots, and neigh- by humans. Each edition of borhoods. Animal Estates intends to provide a the project is accompanied by provocative twenty-fi rst-century model for the some combination of events, human-animal relationship that is more intimate, visible, and thoughtful. workshops, exhibitions, videos, printed materials, and a temporary PORTLAND headquarters presenting an ever- In the gallery, the temporary Animal Estates expanding urban wildlife archive. headquarters features a geodesic dome The project debuted at the 2008 housing a reading library, and a video by Dan Viens on the local swifts that roost in the Whitney Biennial, with other chimney at Chapman Elementary. Evidence INTRODUCTION 2008 Animal Estate developments of past Animal Estates in New York and San located in Austin, Cambridge, San Francisco is presented, along with bulletin- Francisco, Utrecht, and Cleveland. board walls displaying maps, charts, brochures, FRITZ HAEG and other printed materials gathered from local animal experts and wildlife organizations. Animals alternately represent a wildness that The Portland edition of Animal Estates takes we are afraid of in ourselves, or a freedom that its primary inspiration from one of the most we would like to recapture. Animals were the signifi cant existing ready-made “Estates” for subjects of the earliest documented human art. animals in the Pacifi c Northwest: the snag, or In primitive cave drawings we see a reverence for dead tree. These are often removed by humans, the creatures with whom Homo sapiens shared who may only view them as useless hazards, the land. In early cultures, animals were viewed rather than the valuable resources they repre- with wonder, something sacred. Human survival sent to most other creatures. Each of the seven depended on the hunt, which required keen species selected as Portland’s animal clients observation and understanding. An intimate would happily take up residence in a snag: the bond and respect developed, which is less likely Vaux’s swift, the white-breasted nuthatch, the in today’s grocery stores full of anonymous olive-sided fl ycatcher, the silver-haired bat, the meat in Styrofoam and plastic. northwestern garter snake, the orange-rumped Humans are one of many territorial creatures bumblebee, and the snail-eating ground beetle. that occupy the planet, but we are the only A prototype for a collective model home to ones who, when establishing territory, preclude accommodate seven native Portland species is the existence of most other life-forms that we installed in the gallery. The fourteen-foot tower CLIENT 6.2 have not domesticated. Thus, most creatures not functions as a man-made snag, with the interior WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH SITTA CAROLINENSIS a part of the human plan are either considered a divided into multiple chambers built to suit the threat or a pest. As the human domination of the varying needs of each resident. At the top is planet continues, animals are alternately viewed a chimney open to the sky for the Vaux’s swift, as exotic specimens to be treated as spectacle, while the low base of stones and logs accom- cartoon characters that are anthropomorphicized, modates terrestrial species. A poster featuring friendly companions to be coddled, objectifi ed a drawing of the design announces the plan, resources to be exploited, inconveniences to be and encourages local residents to build their tolerated, pests to be eradicated, or anonymous, own interpretation of the Snag Estate, images unseen creatures to which we are indifferent. of which are posted in the gallery and online. As animal habitats dwindle daily, Animal In celebrating the snag, we acknowledge the Estates welcomes wildlife back into our daily pivotal role of death and decomposition in a lives, eradicating the strict, arbitrary, and healthy environment. obsolete boundaries that humans have estab- FIELD GUIDE 5 Portland, Oregon. The City of Roses—city organizations, citizens, school children, artists, of bicyclists, farmer’s markets, and the Urban and theorists came together to create this project. Growth Boundary. Portland’s self-image The Estate that has been created for this edition is a meandering conduit of gentle refl ections, of the project is an instrument and a metaphor rippling across rivers, glistening beneath bridges, for the possibilities of global coexistence. And it washing across creeks and muddy puddles. It is aesthetic, never purporting to become natural. is ebullient, ever molding, verdant, and aspiring, At its essence, and in a profound respect, it is and these days, above all else, it is planned. an assertion of the naturalness of death, of the BUILD A I write these meditations on Animal Estates, and beauty and problem of decay, both as symbolic its remarkable investigations into human and representation and as biological process. animal relationships, as someone who grew up The urban and semiurban habitat nurtures in Portland and claims the license of knowing a schizophrenic attitude toward death. Within BETTER SNAG! this place. And because of this I have particu- inhabited spaces we cloak death, remove it, larly relished the opportunity to welcome this sanitizing this most fundamental aspect of our project to Portland, into this progressive, unfolding existence as we construct the natural around STEPHANIE SNYDER city that we treasure as a particular form of us, more often than not, as a representation JOHN AND ANNE HAUBERG CURATOR AND DIRECTOR, community. In its existence at the Cooley Gallery, of the natural. The snag is a victim of this DOUGLAS F. COOLEY MEMORIAL ART GALLERY, REED COLLEGE Animal Estates is part of a larger, ongoing schizophrenia: seen as dead, removed from investigation entitled suddenly: where we live the living like an ailing patient, it is a corpse. now (www.suddenly.org), a project inspired by But the corpse nurtures, the corpse sustains. the work of German urban planner Thomas When the dead becomes the un-aesthetic, the Sieverts and further instigated by Portland living becomes historicized into permanence, author Matthew Stadler, who enlisted me to join and the living problems of people—the in- him in thinking and reading through the history equalities of class and education eroding our and literature of the vast network of natural, culture—are increasingly cloaked by our obses- built, and symbolic spaces that we have come sion with the preservation of nature, with our to call cities. Suddenly is a set of exhibitions, fear of the corpse. Though we valiantly preserve a reader, and a series of events that we hope habitat, Portland has nurtured and supported will reawaken our sensitivity to the imaginative the development and preservation of the “park” possibilities of place; inspiring us beyond out- as a civic virtue without expending the same moded colonial narratives of permanence and care and resources toward public education and centrality; embracing art, literature, and food as social rituals. Portland’s parks developed in conduits for new social and environmental rituals; inverse relationship to the growing un-sustain- CLIENT 6.3 reinvigorating culture across socioeconomic ability of its decimated clear cuts—its “clearings.” OLIVE-SIDED FLYCATCHER CONTOPUS COOPERI and class boundaries. We need these tools for The foundation of this city was a clearing, but understanding and utilizing the where we live now. a permanent one, not the temporary, seasonal So many Portlanders, whether native or clearing, as nurtured for millennia by the not, have moved here and shaped this place. Native Americans whose corpses too made our Animal Estates 5.0: Portland has assembled permanence possible. And these permanent a passionate group of naturalists and with clearings were condensations of wealth built their expertise devised a “multiplex” dwelling, into homes and objects that demanded a vast inspired by the “snag”—simply put, a dead network of dispersal and collection to sustain tree—in which seven animal species that have their viability. Like most cities, Portland descends been extirpated to varying degrees might only so far into its landscape memory. fi nd shelter, cohabitating comfortably. It is The snag is the shack, temporary, portable, an architectural symbiosis, and not only and both corpses can help us fi nd our way into among the animal species themselves. the future. We don’t really know what a city is any It is emblematic of architecture’s more than we know what art is, except that potential to create unlikely com- we think we know it when we see it, or buy it. munities, to conjoin as opposed to The historic, bureaucratic city, the city that divide. Animal experts, environmental organizes, absorbs, and expends our resources FIELD GUIDE 7 because it has been architected and planned Being green meant being black, brown, and for permanence, that city is only one tiny piece of whatever else.