"GHOSTS OF THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE: ZUGUNRUHE"
AN INSTALLATION BY RACHEL BERWICK
David Winton Bell Gallery
List Art Center
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island
November 14, 2009 - February 14, 2010
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by Meredith Cutler (for Artscope Magazine)
Article excerpt:
As the first decade of the century rounds to the nearest ten, world leaders negotiate climate change in Copenhagen, an orphaned iceberg closes in on Australia's Southern coast, and the long shadow of winter settles over the Northern Hemisphere, chasing flocks of birds on their annual migrations south.
Throughout these winter months, artist Rachel Berwick casts our collective gaze back to migrations and mass extinctions of centuries past with “Zugunruhe,” an installation and lecture series at Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery.
The curious term “zugunruhe” found life in the 1950s, when ornithologist Gustav Kramer took it upon himself to name the documented behavior of nighttime restlessness in birds just prior to migration.
John James Audubon’s 19th century accounts of the American passenger pigeons’ massive migrations cite “the light of the noonday was obscured as by an eclipse” as the birds passed overhead. In recent enough generational memory to sting, the equally dramatic extinction of what was once the most abundant bird in North America takes the spotlight in Berwick’s installation. It was 100 years ago that Martha, the last of the passenger pigeons, became
the bearer of her grim title. She survived five lonely, terminal years in captivity before her species’ official extinction in 1914.
The entryway to “Zugunruhe” displays a rare copy of Audubon’s 1840 book “Birds of America” alongside literary accounts of this vanished migration, set in subtle wall texts. Perched on a central pedestal, a blown glass sphere holds a brass pointer, which rotates like a compass between the texts as if by magic or magnetism. According to Berwick, the pointer follows a “hypothetical migration.” In the confines of this particular time and space, her device must point to historical accounts in lieu of the real thing. It’s easy to get caught up in the novelty of Berwick’s nostalgic device, which engages passing gallery goers with an almost alchemic curiosity as it chases this grim mythology.
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Image: Rachel Berwick, Zugunruhe, 2009, cast copal (amber), wood, two-way architectural mirror, moss, metal, polyester resin.
