Alle Vögel (1992)

Alle Vögel was a video stage constructed on an open peat field, the former work site in the Wittemoor near a Third Reich labor camp outside of Oldenburg, Germany. The peat was used to heat administration buildings and staff housing units at the camp. I arranged sixteen plexiglas plates in a circle with targets superimposed over vernacular names of birds extinct in Germany (industrialization and habit loss). In the accelerating video, taken from a spinning stool at the center, the names on the targets begin to blur and then to fly. German bird names are especially evocative: Seggenrohrsänger (Sedge-tube singer), Raubeseeschwalbe (Sea-stealing Gull), Mornellregenpfeifer (Mornell’s Rain Whistler), Schlangenadler (Snake eagle)