Argumentum Ornithologicum, 2021 (Video Sample)

Video Length 5:19

Like the popular philosophical thought experiment: “If a tree falls in the forest”, Argumentum Ornithologicum references a half-joking, half-serious attempt by Jorge Luis Borges to prove the existence of a higher power by counting birds in flight. The performance raises a question, but is simultaneously an ode to Amazona Vittata or Iguaca, the Puerto Rican parrot— an endemic species, which suffered a devastating setback in their recovery efforts when hurricane Maria pummeled the island in 2017. Against the colonial function of Audubon, and loosely referencing the alter ego of the Max Ernst bird, Loplop, the performance is about human/bird hybrids, fluttering wildly, seemingly blasted by imperceptible winds. Sometimes a stranger or a visitor in an alien land, other times a guardian of its domain, the bird figure operates in a world of secluded sentimentality towards its landscape, what John Berger calls a “sentimental view of nature”, representations of a precarious world where instability and uncertainty reconcile rationality. With further references to Icarus and a mythology of “going native”, the bird character dances, calls out its song, suggesting new ways of seeing; a vision without sight, flight without wings.