Happy Birthday to the Coots

I sing Happy Birthday to the coots. I sing because we ignore them, only tolerating their presence when it doesn’t infringe on our comfort. We protect what is valuable and the birds are not part of that equation. I sing as a way to give back, to acknowledge their presence in the spaces we have created. To recognize their disruption as an essential part of our increasingly urban living. Nature is never far away, it has only adapted into new shapes.
A lot of my practice focus on the use of trash and found materials, which establishes a parallel to the instinctual collecting of the coot. This act of gathering takes on an aspect of the typical archive. The birds instinct of survival makes them a cultural player. They take whatever is left behind, the so designated ‘trash’, and challenge these materials to prove their usefulness once again, to allow them to go past their planned obsolescence. Trash is the ultimate symbol of human culture and birds are the most clear indicator of our disruption of the natural order and its phenomenons. Nature is absorbed by the rhythm of contemporary life.