Juste pour les oiseaux

Strictly for the Birds
Uitsluitend voor vogels

Performance - installation, Taller, France , 2001
by Jacqueline Wassen, Sonja van Kerkhoff, Toroa, Tamatea + Sen McGlinn

 
Seated up a tree Tama began to play music.

    

Tama played for about ten minutes, while a crowd gathered around him.
Then I explained that they had to follow Toroa.
They were told to copy his actions.







Photo: C. Doucet. Images in the bath are by Julia Sorokina & Alexander Malgazharov












Click for 7 seconds of a video zoom in of what Sonja was planting. (700 kb)
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Click on the image on the right for a larger view of the work.
(74 kb)
click on this image to see an enlargement (52 kb) Photo: Christophe Doucet.























"Soft eggs" by Jessy Rahman were propped in the branches of a tree. Beyond this a bright green piece of material seemed to grow out of the end of a thin branch and beyond that we had written a text on a piece of wallpaper on the wall of the shed. It read "I like my birdhouses with elaborations". To the right of the ladder two birdhouse shapes had been cut out of floral wallpaper and hung above two metal brackets.
The text was intended as a humourous reference to Christophe's new gallery with its birdhouse-like tower as well as a contribution to our theme of 'odd bird' references in our forest installation.




Toroa touched the plastic ball holding a minuature tree and then walked over to the shower block.
We sealed the doorway by wallpapering it.








Click for 9 seconds of a video of Toroa in the second shower. (900 kb)

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The walls of the second shower were covered in charcoal drawings mostly made by Sonja. I dug the charcoal from the inside of burnt-out trees lying nearby with the idea of making drawings suggestive of these once living trees. In the wall to wall drawings biird-human forms seemed to peep out from behind the trees. Above the window was a drawing of the silhouette of two birdhouses. It was messy drawing with the stumps of charcoal and so the floor was dusted with these irregular shapes. A bronze and wood sculpture "nature-tool" by Christophe rested in one corner.



touches of red -everywhere





The third shower contained numerious bird-form interventions
made by Jacqueline in ink, chalk combined with the found objects from around the area.They were fossil-like "relics", or remainders.




 



In the fourth shower Jacqueline had lifted up the wooden floor and placed a drawing she made of a bird in a cage into the pit underneath.


 













Click on the image for a larger view (39 kb).


Click on the image for a larger view (77 kb).

Each of the 30 or so birdhouse forms were cut out of patterned wallpaper. Each was about 40 x 15 cm.


Photo: Christophe Doucet













Outdoor works