An Extinction Cabaret

What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret

So sings Liza Manelli’s character in the film version of the 1966 Broadway hit, Cabaret, an homage to Weimar Berlin where the artform flourished before being shut down by the Nazis in the early 1930’s. From its origins at Le Chat Noir in Paris in 1881, the cabaret was entertaining musical theater, with singing and dancing as regular fare, together with an intellectual punch provided by social and political satire. Given its varied nature, the cabaret is the perfect artform for taking on challenging topics like the biodiversity crisis.

On a recent Friday I had a chance to see, Mirabilis: Stories of Wonder and Loss – An Extinction Cabaret, a new theater piece co-directed by Kyna Hamill and Wanda Strukus of Two Roads  based on my book, Brief Eulogies for Lost Animals: An Extinction Reader. Though described as a work in progress, the segments that were performed were highly polished and engaging.

The Two Roads Ensemble for the Mirabilis Cabaret
The Two Roads Ensemble, from Left to Right: Robert Kilburn, Wanda Strukus, Melissa Bergstrom, Nicole Howard, and Kyna Hamill, and me on the far right

My motivations for writing the book were to restore some of these lost animals to our cultural memory. Animals are among our first memories, not just for our stuffed toys, but for our own culture. Our ancestors didn’t paint mountains and trees in the caves of Europe, they painted animals. Both wild and tame, they are our companions here on Earth.

To our folly, we’ve not recognized animals as companions and we’ve lost so many species: through carelessness (the introduction of invasive species), through shortsightedness (habitat loss) and through ignorance (over-exploitation – “Surely, this can’t be the last of them?”). But the animals had a right to their place on the tree of life just like we do.

Mirabilis takes on all of this and is jammed full of highlights – the stories of the lost animals sing out. I was struck by the innocence of the Falklands Islands wolf. Two Roads depicts it as exuberant and playful – and rather adorable – and yet it wound up being hunted to extinction for its pelt. The plight of the Mascarene tortoises hits home too when we see them as voyagers who cast themselves into the sea not knowing where they would wind up. Able to live for more than two hundred years, they are described as the “wise old masters of the Earth.” Incredibly, when they gathered on Mauritius, they were in herds that numbered in the thousands. In another piece, the actors read out individual characteristics of a handful of lost species so that we glimpse them all too briefly before they are gone.

Like any good cabaret, Mirabilis has strong satirical elements and we humans get knocked for our obsession with selfies (in this case, the actors jostle over who can get their selfie taken with the last living bee) and one of the most upbeat songs, called We Ate Them All, is a gleeful lampooning of humans for eating the dodo, passenger pigeon, Labrador Duck and Steller’s Sea Cow to extinction. Other pieces rightfully poke fun at us for being too scared to take action and for getting used to bad environmental news, as if it’s all going to get better on its own.

There are many ways to grieve. When we lose a loved family member or friend, we gather and celebrate them, we wonder at their lives and how they’ve touched us. The segments of wonder in Mirabilis each stand out. In one piece, two actresses are speaking to different parts of the audience and for the one facing me, she was talking about being on the beach in California and wondering if someone was in Japan, also with her feet in the ocean, wondering about connecting with someone an ocean away.

Another piece, called “The Whales,” sees the entire troupe floating about on the stage, coming up occasionally for air, as a recording of the song of the humpback whales plays in the background. It’s a quiet piece, with slow, meditative movements made all the more powerful by the whalesong in the background. In fact, the recording is from the original 1970’s record that was included in a special issue of National Geographic, with narration by Dr. Roger Payne. It was Dr. Payne’s work on whalesong that helped bring about the “Save the Whales” movement that is one of the 20th century’s great environmental success stories. As Dr. Payne reminds us on the recording, whalesong is featured on the Voyager spacecraft’s Golden Record, now jetting its way out of the solar system, bringing their wondrous sounds to the rest of the galaxy. To me, the songs and the movement were a reminder that something very special is happening here on Earth. I wanted to linger in that feeling.

To wonder at nature and at the world is to love it. Mirabilis is a cabaret of wonders and I look forward to the next iteration of this entertaining and provocative work in progress.

A Visit to the Great Auk

What do extinct species have to tell us?

A short hike along the coast out of Joe Batt’s Arm on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, stands a five-foot tall bronze sculpture of the Great Auk. The sculpture was created by artist Todd McGrain for his Lost Bird Project in which larger-than-life sculptures for extinct North American birds were placed where they last thrived. On my visit to Fogo Island this past August, I knew I had to visit the sculpture.

The story of the demise of the Great Auk is among the more tragic of the recent animal extinctions. They were flightless birds but strong swimmers that occupied rocky, isolated islands in the North Atlantic for thousands of years for mating and breeding. The largest colony was at Funk Island, about 50 kilometers northeast of Fogo Island. When European fishing vessels came to Newfoundland for the abundant cod stocks in the early 16th century, they seized on the Great Auk as a source for fresh meat as well as oil for lamps. Their feathers were used for pillows and mattresses and their eggs were collected for food.  Eyewitnesses reported seeing the tame, penguin-like birds being guided up gangplanks onto boats. Evidently, it was a wholesale slaughter. As their numbers plummeted through the 1700’s, extinction warnings went unheeded. And when auks replaced eider as the down of choice, their fate was sealed. The last pair of great auks was strangled off Iceland in 1844 while incubating an egg.

At the head of the path out of Joe Batt’s Arm, a handmade sign showed the way for the Great Auk sculpture. It was only an hour’s walk along a grassy trail with a view of the once-molten coastal rocks, the harbor, and the ritzy Shorefast Inn across the small bay.

I was with a friend and soon we climbed a large granite outcropping and made our way to the sculpture.

Waves lapped at the rocks below and a steady but mild breeze blew. A few terns cried as they swooped over the waves. The sculpture stood about five feet tall and faced the direction of another Great Auk sculpture in Iceland. With its smooth lines and elegant curves, I couldn’t help but run my hand over it.

Todd McGrain's Great Auk sculpture
The Great Auk, by Todd McGrain

It was well placed, so solitary among the elements. Perhaps it was too solitary. They were social birds and their colonies like Funk Island must have been incredible gatherings, full of squawking mates protecting their eggs, taking turns splashing and into and out of the water to fish. It would have been great for the sculpture to have companions. I wished I could populate the site with a group of Great Auks, like Errol Fuller’s painting. And I thought about how different the hike would have been completely different if Great Auks were still wandering and swimming about. (See Brandon Ballangee’s “Framework of Absence.”)

Errol Fuller's "A Last Stand"
Errol Fuller’s “A Last Stand”

We took photos then sheltered in the crevice of some boulders and sat with the sculpture for awhile. It felt special to be alone with it, while thinking about why the sculpture was there in the first place.

When we continued the hike further down the coastal trail and stopped to have our sandwiches, a strange feeling gnawed at me. Something was missing from my visit with the Great Auk. I felt like I needed something to signify our visit, some sort of ritual. I said to my friend that I wanted to stop again at the Great Auk on the way back and we set off again to the sculpture.

I remembered the scene in the documentary film, The Lost Bird Project, when after the sculpture is installed, McGrain anoints it with water. Back at the sculpture, I poured some water from my water bottle into my cupped hand and let it drip onto its head. In that moment, the ritual caught me and suddenly felt significant. It was a moment of honoring the memory of the Great Auk and grieving its loss. Thinking about it afterwards, perhaps it wasn’t me blessing the sculpture, but it was the Great Auk blessing me?

As we learn the stories of recently extinct animals, I wonder what they will teach us. It was strange for me to form a sort of bond with a bird that has been extinct for a century and a half. Every animal has its own tale, and as Todd McGrain told me when I interviewed him, it’s up to us to pay attention.

Artists and Extinction V: Brandon Ballengee

How can artists convey the idea of disappearance and extinction of species?

This has long been a question for Brandon Ballengee, a visual artist, biologist and environmental educator based in Louisiana, whose many art installations have been inspired by his ecological field and laboratory work.

Initially, Ballengee wanted to use silhouettes to show something as there but disappearing. But while experimenting with blacking out extinct animals in old nature magazines, he recalled that Robert Rauschenberg once created a work that was an erased de Kooning drawing. So, rather than erase extinct animals from books, he began to cut them out with an Exacto knife (as long as there were multiple copies of the book).

This led to the creation of his installation, “Framework of Absence.” Ballengee created the works from real historic artifacts that were around while the animal was fading into extinction. After the animal was excised from its source, the depiction was burned and the ashes were placed into black glass funerary urns etched with the names of the lost species.

At installations, viewers were asked to scatter the ashes, an act that Ballengee hoped would connect participants to the lost species and help prevent further extinctions.

A few examples show the power of the exhibit. Here is the Great Auk, missing from the North Atlantic:

2008Ð9. Extinct by the late 19th Century. Artist-cut print from the Bowen Editions Royal Octavo Birds (1840Ð71). Eighth edition printed and hand-colored in 1871 (just prior to plates being burned in warehouse fire). 6 3/4 x 10 3/8 inches. Photography by David W. Coulter.
2008Ð9.
Extinct by the late 19th Century.
Artist-cut print from the Bowen Editions Royal Octavo Birds (1840Ð71).
Eighth edition printed and hand-colored in 1871 (just prior to plates being burned in warehouse fire).
6 3/4 x 10 3/8 inches.
Photography by David W. Coulter.

Here is the Spectacled Cormorant, missing from the Kamchatka Peninsula:

1869/2014. Artist cut and burnt hand-colored stone lithograph, etched glass urn, and ashes. 30 5/8 x 74 5/8 inches. Species last observed 1850s. Photo by Casey Dorobek.
1869/2014. Artist cut and burnt hand-colored stone lithograph, etched glass urn, and ashes. 30 5/8 x 74 5/8 inches. Species last observed 1850s.
Photo by Casey Dorobek.

Here is the Guadalupe Caracara, missing from Guadalupe Island:

1860/2014. Artist cut and burnt wood engraving, etched glass urn, and ashes. 9 1/8 x 11 1/8 inches. Species last observed 1860s. Photo by Casey Dorobek.
1860/2014. Artist cut and burnt wood engraving, etched glass urn, and ashes. 9 1/8 x 11 1/8 inches. Species last observed 1860s.
Photo by Casey Dorobek.

And here is the Sea Mink, missing from the rocky coasts of New England and Atlantic Canada.

1849/2014. Artist cut and burnt print hand-colored stone lithograph, etched glass urn, and ashes. 13 5/8 x 16 inches. Species last observed 1870s. Photo by Casey Dorobek.
1849/2014. Artist cut and burnt print hand-colored stone lithograph, etched glass urn, and ashes. 13 5/8 x 16 inches. Species last observed 1870s.
Photo by Casey Dorobek.

More of Brandon Bellengee’s work can be found at his website.

Previous entries for my series on artists and extinction can be found starting here.