Two hundred years ago, the population of American passenger pigeons was considered limitless, and observers wrote of migrations that completely blackened the sky. At the dawn of the 20th century, however, there was only a single survivor, and with her death, what had once been the most populous bird species in North America was left in the past.
The memory of the passenger pigeon is the focus of "Zugunruhe," an installation by Rachel Berwick showing at the David Winton Bell Gallery. Most of Berwick's pieces meet at the intersection of extinction and renewal, and "Zugunruhe" continues the artist's exploration into the theme of loss in nature.
The exhibition features Berwick's second installation devoted to the passenger pigeon. A previous work, entitled "A Vanishing; Martha," consisted of amber-cast models of birds stacked on metal poles in decreasing numbers, leading to a central pole with only one bird, representing Martha, the final member of the species, who died at the Cincinnati Zoo on Sept. 1, 1914.
"Zugunruhe" sees Berwick revisit the passenger pigeons by means of cast amber, a material that allows the artist both to compose a visually arresting flock and to represent the prematurely forced fossilization of the species.
The title — a term for night-time anxiety and restlessness that birds and other migratory species experience when they begin migrating — was coined by ornithologist Gustav Kramer in the 1950s, according to exhibition notes. The word is formed from the German "Zug," meaning movement, and "Unruhe," anxiety.
Installations are naturally experienced spatially, and so the first room in the exhibit serves as a primer for the rest. In the lobby, a large book on loan from the John Hay Library sits open, displaying an intricate illustration of a passenger pigeon. Printed on the walls of the first room are eyewitness testimonies to the pigeons' ubiquity from prominent naturalists of the 19th century, including John James Audubon, ornithologist Alexander Wilson and author and Native American advocate Simon Pokagon.
At the center of the room sits a spinning, metallic compass encased in a glass shell, topped with a smaller glass dome. Rather than point north, the compass remains in perpetual motion, mimicking patterns of migration. The egg-like construction is simple and serene, with an apparent sturdiness that comments ironically on the pigeons' demise. The compass' ignorance of the pigeons' plight parallels the 19th-century quotations that adorn the walls. The birds' disappearance jars so harshly with the omnipresence the naturalists describe that the viewer feels shocked and unsettled, questioning the fate of any other species now taken for granted.
Just as the viewer commences mourning for the pigeons he or she will never see, the next room brings the overwhelming sight of a tree filled with nesting amber pigeons, encased in a mirrored glass octagon. The ghostly flock — formed from copal, a type of resinous amber — covers every branch of the otherwise barren tree. The birds reference fossilized insects trapped in amber — the cast pigeons are made from a substance that can preserve the genetic material of species that have vanished from the earth.
The case that houses the tree separates the viewer from the no-longer-present pigeons and imbues them with a sense of mystery and distance. At some points, the viewers catch glimpses of themselves in the glass and are reminded of the uncertain dominance of the humans species. The birds, haunting in their spectral permanence, are relics of a past world in closer touch with nature. They remind us to hold on to what still remains and work to stave off any further tragedies of extinction.
