paper ark
Paper Ark is a 13:00 minute video and accompanying installation regarding an inter-dependent, multi-species relationship – a romance, in essence – between a pollinator and its flower, and confronting the sorrow and loss associated with extinction. It reflects on memory and storage, trying to hold on to something that is disappearing, and the necessity of doing that.
The audio text in this work is a hybrid essay written in fragments culled from many sources and amplified and enlarged by a piece of fiction woven within the fragments. The sources include Charles Darwin's writings on orchids, excerpts from Paxton's Magazine of Botany, the writing of Donna Haraway regarding interspecies relationships, the work of Carla Hustak and Natasha Myers on involutionary momentum, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the Landmark Report by Kelsey Kopec at the Center for Biological Diversity, and various news outlets including the Guardian and Time Magazine.
Made in conjunction with the Portland Public Library for Now & Then: Portland Public Library's Collection Reconfigured, Lewis Gallery, Portland, Maine.