Sharing Space

Miranda Brandon

May 2014

MFA Thesis Supporting Paper

Committee Members:

Jan Estep (advisor), Christine Baeumler, Valentine Cadieux

Quietly stalking through the fleshy grass, boots saturated with the morning’s dew, the wind pulling at you gently, urging you to traverse the terrain at its will and not your own. And through the chattering leaves you imagine a faint and distant sound, familiar and foreign all at once.

Yearning to know the source of such musical utterances you course correct, forging stealthily forward in your new direction. Anticipation scratches at the walls of your mind, curiosity pulsing through your limbs, inspiring each hand to tremble, but softly. Minutes feel like hours. You stop as if by some force outside your body, just before reaching a small clearing. Slowly, you part the vegetation before you to reveal what must surely be the most perfect spot any terrestrial or arboreal creature could wish for. Cautiously you enter the seemingly untouched space, careful to disturb as little as possible. The leaves and grass sway, unbothered. The insects carry on with their daily chores. You sit respectfully imagining the various histories that may have occurred in the space you now occupy. Was the sound you heard earlier just an echo of the past, your mind longing for some long lost connection?

Loss

How can we address issues of loss proactively and guard against the vanishing act of species, induced by habitat change? How does human intervention help or hinder the lives of nonhuman animals? These are questions I consider in my two current bodies of work: DIY Bird

Populator and Impact. Both projects are bird-centric with DIY posing specific questions and altering the view of spaces through participatory requests and with Impact raising awareness of bird to building strikes through large-scale photographs.

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Top: DIY Bird Populator (Bismarck Kingfisher) front and back of flyer Bottom: From Papua New Guinea to the Minnehaha Creek, the Bismarck Kingfisher appears in Minneapolis, MN (from DIY Bird Populator)

3 A History with Birds

Humankind has long been curious about avian life, with varying approaches and results. Birds have been incorporated into art, ritual, religion, and identity, and have served as our companions, insights, warnings, explanations, and muses. Graeme Gibson’s work The Bedside Book of Birds provides many such examples of the intertwined nature of humans and birds, across time, culture, and fields of knowledge. The range of avian influence is vast, from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians human-bird depiction of gods to 18th century seafarer warnings and to current practices in tribal medicine. Gibson walks us through Australian myths of envious admirers cursing their human objects of affection to take the form of a bird so that no other person can possess them (60-61), to the

Canadian Micmac tale of a Chickadee, a Robin, a Blue Jay, and a Pigeon chasing a bear across the sky in the form of stars as a way to explain the rotation of the Earth and the cyclical nature of life (48-50), to folkloric lessons. Gibson states, “in folk tales and parables, the bird is our ventriloquist’s dummy: the voice we hear is our own” (79). Projecting onto another species our own deviations, fears, or premonitions. Of particular resonance in Gibson’s collected tales is that of Carl Safina’s account of the violent sea voyage of George Shelvocke from 1719 to 1722 in which a dark albatross accompanying the ship for several days was seen as the cause for the storm the sailors were fighting.

A speculative and rash officer shot the bird in hopes of relief from the storm but instead the crew was met with oppressive winds that greatly prolonged their time at sea. The record of this account was the inspiration for Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of Ancient Mariner, written in 1798, from which the following verse comes:

“And I had done a hellish thing And it would work ‘em woe: For all averred, I had killed the bird That made the breeze blow.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge (89). The ship and crew find themselves in a doldrum. The offending Mariner is made to wear the dead albatross around his neck while the ship is adrift in the sun. All but the offender perishes. He is left 4 alone with the corpses of the bird and the men to remind him of the consequences of his actions. Days go by and still no relief of death comes to the Mariner, until one day he feels his heart fill with love for all things while watching creatures swim in the water near the ship. His love breaks the curse, the albatross falling from his neck and the ship coming to life. Eventually the Mariner reaches the shore of his home but finds his life is one of servitude now. His heart aches only to be relieved by the telling of his tale (Safina 87-89).

A History of Bird Science

Ornithology, the scientific study of birds, has its earliest roots in ancient Greece with

Aristotle’s interest in sorting reports from hunters, farmers, and fishermen on bird distribution, behavior, and morphology. Aristotle created some of the first classification groups, which became the basis for a problematic hierarchy system. Additionally, the compilations on natural history by Pliny the

Elder brought together information from 2,000 sources that may have been lost otherwise (Chansigaud

14-16). But an interruption of ornithological progression occurred during the Middle Ages as the growing influence of the Christian church tended to stifle scientific investigation while favoring symbolism and superstition, such as the belief that cuckoo saliva could produce grasshoppers

(Chansigaud 18). It’s not until the arrival of Renaissance that the field really grows into a concise and systematic science. In the 1500’s, a rise in anatomy studies, continued pressure for critical observations and omission of entries pertaining to fantasy creatures provided for a stronger basis for classification and prepared Europe for the influx of new, foreign species coming back from scientific expeditions abroad (Chansigaud 25-38).

A History of Birds as Objects of Desire

The flood of new bird species coming back from scientific expeditions represented not just beauty but potential income. It wasn’t just the exterior plumage of the bird but also the interior of the body that held potential interest. In Borneo it is still commonly believed that the blood of the Common

Coucal contains medicinal qualities that can be “used both internally and externally as a cure-all, 5 especially for rheumatic complaints” (O’Hanlon 233). To harvest the remedy a nest is located and the legs of the chicks inside are then broken. It is believed that the parent will then forage for “healing herbs” which are used to dress the broken limbs. Upon healing it is believed the chicks retain the healing power of the herbs within their blood and so the chicks are then “collected and bottled whole in brandy or other spirit” and made ready for sale (O’Hanlon 231-233). With exotic species coming in from far away lands, the desire to possess these feathered creatures grew into a market all its own.

Wildly appareled birds had come to represent “earthly paradise” in painterly depictions and it was becoming fashionable to create one’s own private paradise, with the construction of aviaries amongst both the nobility and the bourgeois (Chansigaud 38). An example of the power of such beauty can be seen in Cortés’ 1520 attack on Mexico City in which his final blow to terrorize the Mexican people was setting fire to their vast aviaries (Lopez), taking from them their self designed “earthly paradise”, cruelly destroying a space of peace and beauty.

It wasn’t just live birds that were sought after; there was also a burgeoning demand for skins for natural history collections, both private and scientific. In the 1800s collections averaged about

20,000 skins alone, in the 1900s 30,000 skins. Trade practices grew, impacting some bird populations significantly as some species were more prized, and hunted, than others (Chansigaud 151). As preservation techniques continued to be refined and collections grew the era of natural history collections began.

A History of Hierarchy and Control

The indexing involved in natural history serves as a way to organize and quantify the natural world, but also as a way to set humans apart from it. We observe animal behaviors in the field and study their bodily forms in death, then tuck the bodies away in drawers or stuff them and put them on display to eternally act out some role in an idealized setting that is dressed to appear as if it is free from human influence (Vettese16, Buchhart 27). In our efforts to quantify, gather data, understand, and 6 inform others we strive to control our surroundings. Lack of control, or the perception of such, correlates with greater levels of depression and suicidal ideation due to the stress of uncertainty

(Burger 71), conversely the perception of control correlates highly with levels of life satisfaction

(Hong and Giannakopoulos 554). So, we learn to interpret signs that predict reliable outcomes and when possible we avoid situations that cause distress from the unknown for the sake of maintaining a sense of control.

It was a sense of control, or perhaps disregard of consequences, that brought the House

Sparrow from England to North America. Although considered to be a pest species today it was originally welcomed for utilitarian reasons of insect control in the mid 1800s. Initially introduced in numbers of only a few dozen, the bird has grown to be one of the most common songbirds due to its extremely flexible and adaptable behavior. The European Starling has a similar story, although its appearance happened for purposes of ornamentation not function. A superficial human desire altered the state of the North American ecosystems when the birds were released in New York in the 1890s.

The concept of belonging and the act of intentional placement are elements both readily apparent in my current project DIY Bird Populator which asks participants to take representations of birds who have lost their homes and provide them with new homes while considering the potential consequences of such an act, if the birds were real. The conscious relocation and introduction of non-human species for purposes of utility or ornamentation presumes or ignores the issues of how that species will react and adapt to its new environment as well as how the balance of the ecosystem it is introduced to can be managed to maintain equilibrium. Simply put, should humans be tampering with ecological systems in such additive practices under the illusion of control? How do such interactions shape the mental and physical landscapes that we all inhabit?

7 Toward Control and Havoc

Notions of control, ecological interference or tampering, as well as a broad sense of interconnectivity, have been central to my work over the last 3 years. Although the current work is bird-centric, the roots of DIY and Impact began with insects. For my project New Skins I was collecting the molted shells of cicadas that were left behind on tree trunks, light posts, fences, and the peeling paint on waste bins. In the late summer I’d hear their calls and having noticed the remnants of their former selves latched to various surfaces I felt compelled to collect them. In September of 2011,

I began a straightforward photographic investigation of their husks, lighting and cataloging each individual against a simple white background. I found myself spending a lot of time prepping the little alien shells for documentation, gently washing away with water and a fine paintbrush the dirt caked onto each individual. My close and intimate interaction with the small, delicate, natural remnants brought about a deeper sense of appreciation for these creatures that shed their skin to emerge anew.

Observing the tiny, fine facial hairs and bodily structures as well as the nuanced differences in size aroused both fascination and concern. I began to question what else I’d been overlooking. A need came over me to call attention to these creatures that undergo such fantastic transformations, to heighten their visibility and elevate a sense of wonder surrounding them. I began creating flamboyant new skins, using paint, glitter, thread, plastic jewels, fine fiber, and paper. The discarded and revamped exoskeletons became tiny monuments to their former owners. The new casings were then placed back out in the world, now bright spots of color to draw in the human gaze for closer inspection and consideration. The interventions had an unsettling quality though. In my attempts to draw attention to the small but phenomenal acts of nature occurring all around us I created a strange new hybrid of human and nonhuman interaction that came to egocentrically suggest that the cicadas needed fashion assistance and were otherwise not fit to share a common space until they had been molded into some kind of consumer product.

8 It was the working through of the New Skins project with the cicadas that led me into the next phase of thinking about a world of natural phenomena ignored or undervalued, overshadowed by technology and induced attention deficits. The project that evolved was Tomorrow’s Natural History.

Photographing site-specific installations shown as large-scale images, a dystopian future of a world gone awry is portrayed. The photographs of Tomorrow describe an unnerving place where dark figures flash through your periphery and the sound of dry twigs snap just a few feet behind you.

Senses heightened, you spin your body but find nothing, uncertain whether the presence you felt was a physical reality or merely a figment of imagination.

Presence, 2012. (From Tomorrow’s Natural History).

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Highrise, 2012. (From Tomorrow’s Natural History).

Multiple bird species nest in highrise fashion, mimicking human communal living. Elsewhere a pet canary, free of its cage, has undergone unexpected, rapid evolutionary adaptations, now with a beak suited for hunting small mammalian prey. Ghostly cranes stand in a pool of water reflecting lush greenery interrupted by human infrastructure overhead. Taking notice of which animals I was choosing to represent in the environment as well as the process of making the images, taking actual

10 physical items out into each space, spending time in that space while installing the items then making the image was all building toward the beginning of DIY and Impact. In DIY I took the processes of control I was exercising in Tomorrow and developed a project that invites others to actively consider the outcome of intentional interaction with the nonhuman animal world while in Impact I focused on bringing to the fore the negative impact of how humans inhabit a shared space.

DIY Bird Populator and Impact

The darker, more dystopian projection present in Tomorrow’s Natural History has since been supplanted with the sense of a more present and timely issue, something we can see happening now instead of looking at the aftermath of events past. My recent work, DIY Bird Populator, which began in May 2013, is still examining the intersections of human and nonhuman activities but with a more narrowed and specific focus on birds. DIY initially consisted of a series of posters, each highlighting one particular species of bird, that were folded and distributed as packets with additional information.

DIY has evolved into scaled down flyers, which include more information regarding the bird’s habitat, behavior, conservation status and particular threats it may be facing. The birds are scaled to a size representative of their true size and designed so that if they are left out in the world a passerby can gain information about the bird and the project from text printed on the back of each bird. The flyers invite participation with text on the front of each stating, “Create your own population of your favorite bird wherever and whenever you like. Simply extract birds and attachment tabs, fold tabs, then secure in place with a thumbtack.” The flyers are die cut so birds are easily removable in anticipation of inhabiting a new space. The presented task may be approached with eagerness or caution, sometimes both. The language used intentionally criticizes a sense of consumerism and egocentrism but also obliges viewers to interact with their environment more conscientiously through the task of trying to find a habitable space for a particular bird to reside. The flyers pose many questions to consider while engaging with the birds and additional instructions on the reverse side encourage and inform 11 participants how to share the images they make of their birds once re-homed.

Once you’ve re-homed your Huia: -Consider him in his new habit. -Consider yourself in this shared space. -Do you welcome his presence? -Can you hear his flute-like voice playing for you? -Do you wonder if he’d startle and take to flight or approach with curiosity? -What can be gained from such interactions and such presence of mind?

Next: -Photograph this Huia and consider the image. -Do you wish it were a photo of an actual, living Huia that you’d encountered serendipitously? -Does the photograph represent something that is only fiction, like a false memory, or something that could have been a true encounter? -How will this photograph compare with your future landscape and who inhabits it? When the present becomes the past what shape has the environment taken? Who pays the cost? Who reaps the benefits?

Original DIY Bird Populator (Huia), poster and re-homed documentation, 2013.

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DIY Bird Populator (Huia) Flyer front and back

13 In Impact I photograph dead birds. But the birds aren’t specimens, lying in a sterile drawer, stiff with cotton, in a back room of a natural history museum. Instead, the birds I photograph have a sense of almost still belonging in the present. While their bones may no longer support their flight and their hearts may no longer push blood through their bodies they remain intact. The warmth of their electricity has escaped their core but it is hard to believe that such stillness has overcome their body and their mind as their form is still so much the same as it was just moments prior.

Searching in downtown for such avifauna at the bases of gleaming human-made structures, only their soft down feathers moving with each brief breath of wind, I carefully roll each casualty into the palm of my hand. I gaze at the bird and take a moment to allow the rush of excitement and sorrow to flow through me. I cradle each bird in my hand. I find myself so pleased by the opportunity to see such delicate design and beauty up close, to spread out a wing and observe how the feathers move together, to touch the rough but sleek toes and imagine what trees they’ve clung to, and to see the tiny whiskers near the beak and all the variations of color in each feather. But as the bird’s head limply wags back and forth as I examine it I feel great sadness and take another moment to mourn the needless loss of such beauty and life.

During migration season from 2007 - 2013, 4,515 birds have been found dead due to collisions with built structures in Minneapolis/St. Paul. The death tolls are spread across a variety of species from songbirds to raptors to waterfowl (Eckles). Birds are collected during

Fall and Spring migrations when birds are leaving for warmer wintering grounds or returning to breed and rear young. Navigating through cityscapes can be quite treacherous, even small birds like warblers or hummingbirds can reach flight speeds of 30 mph which can produce lethal brain damage upon impact against the solid surfaces of downtown architecture (Whitford).

14 The images show the fatal consequences that other species bear as metal, glass, and cement erupt from the ground. The images are printed large, 65” x 44” with birds appearing 6 to

12 times their natural size. Some are depicted as if at the moment of impact or just moments afterwards, falling through the air or posed in quiet portraiture with heads drawn eerily back or unnaturally to one side. At such a large scale the birds cannot be easily ignored or tidied up into a garbage bin. The photographs demand space for their subjects and in return offer an intimate view of each subject, allowing minute details to seen. An accompanying book containing photos and text provides statistical information on bird death tolls across the Twin Cities and North

America.

It is my hope that the beauty of the birds coupled with their unnatural postures will necessitate the need for pause and consideration of how human presence impacts the spaces we occupy, to serve as a reminder that this world is a shared space and we must take care to consider those with which it is shared.

Impact (Ruby-throated Hummingbird), 2013.

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Other Value

We live in a time of an expanding human population into a finite and exhaustible space. We are a part of the natural world but have historically separated ourselves from it and claimed superiority.

Part of this separation can be traced to religious concerns towards the creation of humans in the image of “the Almighty” with said entity instilling in each human a soul (Bennett 86-87). The soul: unseen, unexplainable, and unverifiable, a defining characteristic we humans supposedly possess which sets us apart, as special, from the rest of the animal kingdom and creates an imbalance of worth. Investment in such religious culture places Man at the top of the hierarchy and instills the idea of having a right to act over others (Bennett 88). Additionally, non-human animals, when compared to humans, have been viewed as lacking emotion, deep culture, having inferior reasoning faculties, and having no in-depth memory processing, living instead in a “series of instances…rather than a thoughtful narrative”. In this practice of comparison non-human animals become a foreign “Other” within a value system that indicates low worth and thus allows for abuse (Broglio xvi-xvii). Such separation and conjured superiority has nurtured the conditions for the current extinction crisis in which we are witnessing the depletion of biodiversity at a rate unparalleled in our history (Blossey 171) with dozens of species vanishing daily with human activity driving 99% of extinctions (Chivian and Bernstein).

Cultural value systems driven by material goods and tangible services place nonhuman animals low on the scale of worth with systems rooted in capitalism and worth based on “monetary valuation”

(Bennett 5). Conservation biased by dollar amount translations of species goods and services is highly problematic. An economic model presents problems in obtaining accurate measures of the costs and benefits produced by different species and the ecosystems they support and evaluations based on past or incomplete data “could result in the extinction of species we undervalued previously” (Blossey

171). The trickle down effects of the loss of species within ecosystems is being observed in places where particular species are being rewilded, or re-introduced, back into habitats that they were

16 previously a part of but from which they had been eradicated from due to various events. George

Monbiot, writer and environmental activist, describes the phenomenon of trophic cascades, which highlight the interconnectedness and importance of the roles animals play in maintaining specific ecosystems. Monbiot highlights the effects of large animals, with the reintroduction of wolves into

Yellowstone National Park after having been absent for 70 years. The re-introduction of a wolf population provided a form of population control for the deer that had grown great in number without wolves to manage and balance their population. The presence of the wolves began to reduce the number of deer as well as alter the space the deer grazed in. Spaces the deer now began to avoid, in order to avoid being trapped by wolves, began to regenerate its vegetation. With the vegetation able to recuperate, other animals, such as birds and beavers attracted to the young trees, started to return to the park. Dams that the beavers constructed provided additional pocket habitats for other species, such as otters, ducks, and fish. Additionally the wolves maintained coyote populations, which brought about a rise in the small rodent population, which in turn attracted raptors and other small mammal hunters.

Similarly, the re-introduction of over harvested whales in the southern oceans revived collapsed populations of fish and krill. It was observed that whales release fecal plumes near the surface of the water, which acts as fertilizer while photosynthesis occurs in phytoplankton which is necessary to sustain krill and fish. Additionally, the movement of whales through the water propels the plankton perpetually back towards the surface which promotes continued reproduction as well as provides the plankton with continued opportunity to absorb carbon from the atmosphere, with tens of thousands of tones of carbon being absorbed at the height of the whale population. Monbiot cites examples of large animal loss, but in DIY I consider and ask participants to consider how the loss of a particular bird, the

Bismarck Kingfisher, might affect its unique ecosystem. I write in an open letter to the Kingfisher:

Kingfisher, When you are gone will the minnows flash their fins and consume the insects and algae of the river without abandon? When the algae is gone and the insect eggs have all been eaten then what? Will the fish move on? Or will they hesitate too long, their bellies turning up and their bodies rising, dead-eyed

17 to float along the surface of the water? Will the small fishing mammals in turn seek richer waters? If they do, who else will be left to tend the river?

Increasing awareness of environmental challenges and vying for societal support may prove to be the only way to secure disappearing populations of both flora and fauna as well as the communities they create (Blossey 171).

The words of ecologist and educator Aldo Leopold seem particularly relevant here: “The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: ‘What good is it?’” (145-146). Leopold continues on to state that a weakness in conservation based on economic value “is that most members of the land community have no economic value. Wildflowers and songbirds are examples.” He says that in his home state of Wisconsin “Of the 22,000 higher plants and animals … it is doubtful whether more than 5 per cent can be sold, fed, eaten, or otherwise put to economic use. Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community, and if its stability depends on its integrity, they are entitled to continuance” (210). Furthermore, commenting on one of the certainties of accumulated scientific data

Leopold writes: ‘the trend of evolution is to elaborate and diversify the biota” (216), not to taper the

Earth’s biotic components down to a handful of monocultures, leaving vast systems susceptible to collapse at the introduction of unfamiliar, invasive species or new diseases or intolerance to changing weather patterns induced by global warming. Pointing to the importance of biodiversity is another aim in the DIY project by posing questions that challenge whether our spaces are richer or poorer with the addition or loss of a species.

Returning to the notion that nonhuman animals lack emotion or comprehension at the level of human abilities as reason for demotion down the rungs of hierarchy Jane Bennett, a political scientist, recounts Charles Darwin’s encounter with worms. Darwin is moved to make an argument for the agency of worms through his close observations of them. He states that their processing and enrichment of the soil fosters the conditions necessary for plant growth which in turn makes the “earth hospitable to humans” allowing us to produce a deep culture that is then held against such lower life

18 forms. He goes on to explain that worms display reactive behavior that is not just a product of a preprogrammed reflex but one of conscious decision-making based on the task at hand. Darwin argues for the “small agencies” but “accumulated effects” of worms, which Bennett turns into a case for the abolition of hierarchy, a system that assigns worth based on size and perceived consciousness that limits our appreciation and understanding of other organisms based on an incomplete and/or superficial value assessment (95-99). “Realizing and taking seriously that there are other beings with other worlds and ways of being on this earth means reassessing humanism and what it means to be human.”

Comprehension of these worlds and their inhabitants requires encounters with that which is Other

(Broglio xviii). We needn’t go far to encounter that which is Other Bennett reminds us that our human bodies are not wholly human. She reminds us that “flesh is populated and constituted by different swarms of foreigners,” microorganisms living with us performing various different tasks. “Humans are not exclusively human,… rather, an array of bodies, many different kinds of them in a nested set of microbiomes. If we can begin to recognize our interconnected and interdependent state of being and move toward a more “horizontal,” compared to “ontological,” point of view regarding shared space and those we share it with we can move “toward a greater appreciation of the complex entanglements of humans and nonhumans” (112-113). This is an appreciation that will be necessary in accepting nonhuman animals as part of our community, as members of a collective public, striving to preserve the health and richness of our world.

Like Minded/ Artistic Influences

In the interest of increasing awareness and vying for societal support it seems highly sensible to turn to art making to address issues of ecological concern and worth disparity amongst the living organisms we share space with. The artist is removed from the constraints and perceptions that bind other disciples, such as the “danger” of anthropomorphizing within the field of science. The artist is free to investigate and discover as s/he deems necessary and then translate what is found through the 19 lens and language of the visual world, transforming data and statistics into something visceral that can then be accessed by many different entry points.

The works of Mark Dion, Simen Johan, and Amy Stein all figure into my thoughts when considering approaches to ideas of hierarchy, consumerism, control, and a sense of history and narrative.

My own urges to collect and catalog, in New Skins, and then attempt to re-rank the cicadas stature was cause for me to be directed to the work of installation artist Mark Dion. His exploration of systems of cataloging based on knowledge disparity across organisms, issues of control over disorder and representation leading to hierarchies, as well as how these systems lead to abusive relationships with that which we call the natural world is relevant to how the othering, and lack of empathy, for nonhuman organisms has evolved (Vettese 11-15). In pieces like Landfill, Grotto of the Sleeping Bear

– Revisited, and Tar Museum – Cave Bear Dion has created large scale dioramas, akin to those seen in natural history museums, and the truth of representation of a changing natural history is brought to light. Here Dion illustrates the human component to a changing landscape and forces us to look at how nonhumans are suffering the consequences thus lifting the veil of romanticism presented by natural history institutions (Buchhart 21-28).

Challenging historical representations of the natural world by depicting a present yet unattractive side, in Dion’s case, or creating a dark projection of a future world, in Johan’s case, has also been alluring to me with my own interest in creating images of a desolate, future landscape shaped by overconsumption in Tomorrow’s Natural History. Johan’s desire to depict a world overwrought and changed by ego-centrism and greed can be seen in his series Until the Kingdom Comes. In this world bears rummage through the discarded produce of burnt out, disheveled towns, buffalo lay in rubble within dark, dust-filled skies, a ring-tailed lemur sits in a tree holding a blossom but appears grayed, eyes heavy, too exhausted to appreciate the beauty he holds in his hand, while other hoofed and furred animals struggle to survive in darker and unsettlingly mixed ecosystems. Confusing the 20 lines between “the natural and the artificial” Johan says he creates visual tableaus in which “human intervention has caused ecological disarray.”

In Domesticated Amy Stein stages recreations of local narratives of Matamoras, Pennsylvania, a small town bordering a state forest. Her photographs retell actual stories of human and nonhuman animal interaction as the forest residents emerge from their space into what has been claimed as human space. Many of the images describe a sense of dominance, as young boys corner a raccoon with threats of skateboards and fireworks, and hunters take aim from the comfort of their fenced in yards.

Other images show the strange overlap of built and natural worlds, deer wait by the highway, bears observe swimmers at the pool, fawns take refuge in green houses, and birds get caught in soccer netting. Stein’s images point to the effects our presence has on the reshaping of environments as well as our complicated relation to the animals that these spaces are shared with. Just as Dion and Johan discuss our need for control over the “natural” world so do Stein’s images in how we interact with animals, sculpt our environments, and presume that the beasts of the forest will stay in the forest solely because humans have inhabited the surrounding area. Stein’s use of taxidermied specimens for her recreations also adds another layer of conflict to our understanding of nonhuman animals. The bobcats, deer, bears, etc have been posed and stuffed relative to our knowledge of what it is to be a bobcat, deer, bear, etc. So not only are these accounts told from the point of view of a human the animal actors in the images have also been recreated through the eyes of a human with Stein insisting “ there are no animals here, only human ideas about them” (Landes, Lee, & Youngquist, 9).

Practices of physical installation, as used by Dion, paired with the narrative approach and medium of photography, as used by Johan and Stein, are brought together in my work which satisfies my interest and need to interact with and feel the spaces I’m in, as well as see how the direct presence of the objects I’m photographing affect the space, as was the case in Tomorrow’s Natural History and

DIY Bird Populator. DIY strongly relates to the process and sense of narrative in Stein’s images yet the participatory nature of DIY asks not to just to look but to try to see from the eyes of specific 21 animals, to try to imagine their needs and challenges and project what might need to happen or change in our to ensure survival and to create a new story. Of course this ability is still constricted by being human but it is a step toward understanding and building empathy.

The images in Impact have a much more minimalist appearance but still utilize an unsettling sense of elegance and sadness as in Johan’s work and challenge an understanding of what the current state of the natural world is as Dion does with his natural history inspired cases.

Through My Lens

My approach to awakening awareness of the ecological concern of species loss as well as drawing attention to how we dwell together is through the medium of photography. With the camera’s ability to most directly document what is before its lens the field of photography has had a long- standing relationship with its depiction of reality. Although this relationship has been a rocky one with questions of what truly qualifies as an honest document (Morris 65) there is also a strong tendency and desire to trust what we see, especially if what we see confirms a prior held belief (Morris 84).

Photographs, and their relation to reality, also provide an alternative way to view history (Morris 31).

An alternative history, or future narrative, is of particular interest to me regarding my DIY project. Die cut flyers with imagery and text invite participation both in the field and the gallery. Participation in the field reroutes the participant’s storyline as well as that of the birds within the flyer and anyone who may come upon a bird left in the field. In the gallery viewers are prompted to imagine where specific birds could go and how their presence might affect that space. Both levels encourage the participant, although with varying degrees, to explore spaces and recognize how those spaces are structured, for whom, and how it could be different. But ultimately the prompt from the flyers is to rewrite the history of a bird’s fate and to create a new photograph representative of that fate and then to question our role in the whole matter. By pairing the flyers with photographs made with the bird cut outs there is no attempt to fool by illusion, as the secret and the trick are displayed side by side. But in 22 acknowledging the representational nature of the activity there is a certain uneasiness that accompanies as the desire to want to believe that these creatures are prospering, despite their conservation status, is challenged.

In regards to Impact I will refer to Elaine Scarry’s On Beauty and Being Just to convey my intent. Scarry describes the power of beauty in relation to its disarming and “decentering” effects on the human ego, creating cause to challenge our own perceived hierarchies of the world (77). Being in the presence of beauty, like that of a songbird, even if only a photographic depiction, creates the opportunity to slow down, to reflect, and it frees us from ourselves so that we may “be in the service of something else” (78). The scale of the birds is such that close proximity to an image provides such detail that a viewer can become lost in the wonder of its minutiae. When we’re “lateral” to our own self, not thinking in anthropocentric terms, is when there is the greatest opportunity to act on or understand issues of equality. So, beauty serves as a catalyst, for those that are open, to create the circumstance for equity by means of the pleasure of removing ourselves from our centeredness (78-

79).

Conclusion

As Leopold noted, “we only grieve what we know” (48). By assuming the role of “gentle provocateur” I’m able to expand upon what is familiar and “what we know.” Using a medium closely tied with reality in a manner that questions what is true and what is illusion I can call attention to some of our current environmental challenges, including the roles humans play in creating and solving such challenges. Impact figuratively enlarges the issues faced by birds when moving through built spaces, giving voice to their plight. While DIY’s participatory approach questions what we want our future landscapes to hold by providing a prompt to re-imagine spaces that surround us to include waning, lost, or new species. Both projects strive to reduce hierarchy and otherness, encouraging a return to a time when romanticism, placing stock in myth to heed a modern day mariner’s tale. 23

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