Precarious Birds is a collaboration between Timo Rissanen and Zoe Sadokierski through which we process and document our reaction – mostly grief – to the precarious circumstances of birds in the Sixth Extinction. In 2018, we began assigning each other a precarious bird each month (from the IUCN Red List categories Critically Endangered to Extinct) to respond to through creative practice; a 'conversation' through making. We started with latin names beginning with A — Ava tricolor (Cuban macaw) and Anas Laysanensis (Laysan duck) — intending to work our way down the alphabet. Eighteen months later, around Kakapo and Kinglet Calyptura, we whittled our lists down to six birds each; producing a creative response a month proved impossible with other work commitments, and some birds haunted us more than others. Through a range of visual and material experiments (primarily cross-stitch poetry for Timo and collage/drawing for Zoe), expanded with desktop research, interviews (with biologists, novelists, historians, other artists and designers), conversations with each other (including a one-week residency in Albany, NY) the project aims to give form to accelerated and irrevocable losses, but also to draw out stories of seeming resurrection and hopeful recovery.
research through design
biodiversity loss
visual narrative
transformative narratives
reflective practice
research through design
biodiversity loss
visual narrative
transformative narratives
reflective practice