Martha

A few of you have asked about the odd little bird that pops up here and there on the Dada Duende Website. She is a visual ode to Martha, the last known Passenger Pigeon, created by myself using some Midjourney AI tricksiness blended with some other visual elements. I am fascinated by Martha and other “Endlings” (an endling is simply, and tragically, the very last creature of a species gone extinct).

Passenger Pigeons were once a very common species, it is believed they constituted 25-40% of the entire bird population in the U.S. They were hunted to extinction by humans in a remarkably (depressingly) short period of time during the 1800s. From the Smithsonian’s website page about Passenger Pigeons: “In the winter the birds established "roosting" sites in the forests of the southern states. Each "roost" often had such tremendous numbers of birds so crowded and massed together that they frequently broke the limbs of the trees by their weight. In the morning the birds flew out in large flocks scouring the countryside for food. At night they returned to the roosting area. Their scolding and chattering as they settled down for the night could be heard for miles.

The migratory flights of the passenger pigeon were spectacular. The birds flew at an estimated speed of about sixty miles an hour. Observers reported the sky was darkened by huge flocks that passed overhead. These flights often continued from morning until night and lasted for several days.” And then, in the blink of a generational eye, they were GONE.

The first time I ever heard about Martha was in a song by the band Agitpop, simply called “Martha” (1986), with a crude xerox copy of this picture accompanying the lyrics on the liner notes. They never mention her name in the song, just express that “we should be sorry for the things we do, we should remember life is pretty cool…”

I’ve done a lot of reading about endlings in the last 10 years or so. It’s a sad obsession, and I know that I am not alone in this fascination. I have dreams about finding a missing Tasmanian Tiger. I have nightmares about living to see the last elephant.

Last week, Chris and I reached out to his old friend, Jeffrey Kastner to ask for some advice about our project, and Jeff immediately recognized Martha on the Dada Duende website. He asked if we were familiar with artist John Gerrard’s recent artwork about Martha. Jeff recently wrote an article about Gerrard in Artforum, and I was grateful to learn of it! His description of the piece gets to the root of what is special about this work, and about Martha, whose only role in the world now is to haunt people like us:

“But it was Endling (Martha), 2021, the smallest and most retiring of the three projects, that made the most lasting impact. Set in a darkened, low-ceilinged side room, the simulation brought to virtual life the last American passenger pigeon, a female (named after the first US first lady) who died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Based on historic photos of the bird and recent scans of its preserved body, the monochrome reimagining of the creature—the sole survivor of what was once a population in excess of three billion—was achingly slow and stately in its pace. And when the animal broke the work’s static spell by blinking her tiny round eye, she blossomed from object into subject: dead and yet alive, incontrovertibly gone and forever present.”

— Jeffrey Kastner

Duende

The Harp of David