Preparing for my visit with a dead bird:
Well, arrangements have now been made and in August I’ll be heading to Washington, D.C. to spend time with Martha, who was the last surviving passenger pigeon and who is currently on public display at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. I’m excited and a bit nervous, as I know this is likely the last opportunity I’ll have to spend this kind of in-person and person-to-bird time with Martha. Even with the museum’s carefully controlled conditions, time does have an affect, and once the Smithsonian’s exhibition Once There Were Billions: Vanishing Birds of North America comes down, I wonder if Martha might be too frail for future outings.
I think it was around twelve or thirteen years ago that Martha first appeared in my work. She entered my practice around the time that I started working on my making sense project which I started to disperse in 2004 and while I was doing some preliminary work for my artist bookwork titled until my body says sleep (Kokyo) which was completed in 2006. There’s connections I feel between Kokyo and the Crane of that bookwork and Martha the passenger pigeon. There’s a kind of resonance that I sense, there and also in the shared space between them and some of the other works within my ongoing wings walking water project. I’m currently working with some of the interplay that happens between these works and others like with the flipbook we be (2008); A Young Girl, a Young Woman, and a Woman Nearing Sixty (2011-2013); a child’s fable (2013); my text walking process and video poems (which started in 2014); and my recent bookwork a frail history: thirteen poems disguised as a passage (2015). And I’m asking myself, what happens when one allows oneself to be in slow conversation with a place, an image, a memory, an existing work, a dead bird? What might be experienced and heard when one engages in an act of listening, not only with one’s ears but also with one’s whole body and with one’s subconscious as well as conscious mind? And what might be understood, created, and shared through such a process?
The opportunity to be there with Martha and to be working from Washington for ten days focusing on themes of loss and beauty, intimacy, remnants and the resonant found has been made possible through the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, for which I am so grateful.
(Wednesday, May 27th, 2015)
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My visit with Martha:
In August (2015), I was able to spend ten days in Washington, D.C. to be in residency with Martha, who died on September 1st, 1914. She was the last passenger pigeon.
A hundred years after her death, and the extinction of the species Ectopistes migratorius, the Smithsonian Institute brought Martha out of storage as part of their exhibition Once There Were Billions: Vanished Birds of North America. After January 3rd, 2016 however, the plan was for Martha to be returned to the vault.
For the ten days I was in Washington, my hotel room became my studio. And daily I walked down to the National Museum of Natural History to spend time with Martha. I took a different route each day, text walking along the way (taking photographs with my phone, of words/text that caught my attention).
This fall I’ve started to work with the material that I gathered and gleaned on the streets of Washington, and from my experiences with Martha. And so far, I’ve created a series of postcard pieces, have written a series of poems using the text walking to Martha words that I photographed each day, and have completed an artist bookwork titled bird is the word that incorporates those poems.
This project feels far from done, however. And I will continue to feel my way through this process, where bird is the word.
(Thursday, December 3rd, 2015)
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The following are images used on some of the postcard works:
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And the following are excerpts from poems that are a part of the bird is the word artist bookwork, as well as some images of the completed bookwork.
bird is the word
Day 1: Sunday, August 9th
1.
the bird identified a place to pass through
to the other side
introducing a choice to savor the shaken
and ride a return
to listen to a sensible alternative
to repair a broken meter
and refresh thirsty voices
buried
below the line
as a traveler, I volunteer to fold daily acts
to welcome the transporter
alternating layers of the page
and landscaping flow
with rough bits
building out of trash
and half hidden love
beauty, only the beginning
the renewal project, a joint venture
entering and exiting the archive
slicing sweet impact
and opening digital possibilities
for the inquisitive
with languages rebuilt
in raw reunion
2.
look, you’re missing something
the legend is accessible
the spirits make no plans to disappear
in the deadly toll
parking forever in a tow away zone
gently handle the fragile heirlooms
for a slow exchange
of the told and overheard
to reach and respond to eyewitness talk
of distances
designed to filter runoff and drought
and to carry out
innovation
and street play
building a mobile connection
4.
specimen USNM 2 2 3 9 7 9 / 2 3 6 6 5 0
collected 1914
not normally on view
she died, the last
passenger
Day 3: Tuesday, August 11th
1.
understanding, temporarily disrupted
recycle the read
trade-in transactions
insert return
keep off the fries
today, you’ll need flexibility
to taste the accessible
Day 5: Thursday, August 13th
1.
pssst …
legend has it that Martha brought luck
on summer evenings
even from the shore of extinction
during periods of mammoth change
and here, now
a conversation with the bird
unravelling stories
and lean fiction
located between death and chance
the invisible making connections
through traces of revealed landscapes
hand rolled sweets
and memory
Day 9: Monday, August 17th
2.
by quantum tunneling
introducing a formation factor
transcribed through a long series of books
suggesting adventures of transit
and rejuvenation
of independence from the frozen framing
of history
playing at times, to find more space
to reflect and celebrate
kind humour
inspired by recyclables
to welcome a bird buddy
I engage the collapsible photo
create crosstown activity
later smile
and venture the dangerous drop
to watch
for hand filled slices
where neighbourhood tonic cures
revealed
happy campers
and a quiet guardian
* * *
Thinking about process (my process of text walking, of working with flipbooks, of poetics, of osmotic thinking, …), I wanted to see what would happen if I continued to work with the material that I gathered while text walking to Martha (the dead passenger pigeon) back in August 2015 and with the bird is the word poems that I wrote last fall. The outcome has been a series of bird is the word flipbooks.
Nine days carried within twelve flipbooks.
(April 2016)
bird is the word (nine days to Martha)
This video is 19 minutes, 17 seconds in length.
I started working on a bird is the word video back in the winter of 2015, after visiting Martha in August of that year, while she was on display as part of the Smithsonian’s exhibition Once There Were Billions: Vanished Birds of North America. There were many reasons why that video never got finished. And there were many reasons why this past winter I felt I had to return to it.
During the past few months I’ve enjoyed and appreciated the slow and labour intensive process of video editing this piece. It has offered me space to be with feelings of loss and beauty … to listen once again to what is heard and not heard … and to think about the pace and rhythms of daily life. It has reminded me of how much there is to experience and re-experience. And how much there is still to learn.
On this first day of spring, it feels good to finally post and share what has become bird is the word (nine days to Martha).
(March 20th, 2019)
I would like to acknowledge and thank The Canada Council for the Arts for their generous support of my practice and this project, which allowed me to make the trip to Washington, D.C. to be ‘in residency’ with Martha and to carry out this work.
