“Memorial for the Lost”, the exhibition project by the Hillside Projects (Emily Berry Mennerdahl and Jonas Böttern, Stockholm/SE) tells of grief, loss and the largest human-induced extinction of species in the history of the earth.
The exhibition project by Hillside Projects – Memorial for the Lost – focuses on those who are so often forgotten and who have almost completely slipped out of view due to the COVID-19 pandemic. – Namely all those animals that belong to a species that is currently on the verge of extinction, because we are in the middle of the greatest extinction of species of all time, for which we humans are responsible.
We live in an age that has come to be known as the “sixth mass extinction” and according to researchers some 17,000 to 100,000 species die out each year. How do we mourn these species and how does it teach us to value better the life that remains? Memorial for the Lost is set in a fictional forest and tells the story of six individual animals, each one the last of their species. We meet Benjamin the Tasmanian tiger, Martha the passenger pigeon, Celia the Pyrenean ibex along with Celia’s cloned offspring, the Moho bird Kauaʻi ʻōʻō and Incas the Carolina parakeet: they all get a new lease of life in the artists’ film. The camera sweeps through the forest and focuses in turn on a female narrator and on poles brandishing fabric with printed archive pictures that embody the extinct animals. Singing bowls are placed on the fabrics and the sound conveys a tender healing process which becomes an appeal to take care of the planet. Hillside Projects places death and loss at the centre of the film, but at the same time wishes to demonstrate humankind’s ability to learn and heal wounds.
Caroline Elgh Klingborg, Curator at Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm/SE, on the occasion of the screening of the videoMemorial for the Lost
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