Twa corbies
Installation for Urban Birds, Arlington Gardens, Pasadena CA, May 7, 2023, and Audubon Center, Debs Park, Los Angeles, May 13, 2023.
Two small sounding curio cabinets, placed in each urban park within walking distance and in sight of one another, such that both are audible to a participant approaching one.
Some drawers empty; some filled with bottlecaps, 10d nails, old keys, and broken glass, as a raven might scavenge; some filled with eucalyptus bark, gravel, and burned scrub brush, taken from a hiking trail near Elsmere Canyon, California. This site burned during the record season of drought, heat, and fire of summer 2020.
Inside each cabinet, two bluetooth speakers playing recordings of ravens calling to one another, their sounds waxing and waning at a rate proportional to the acceleration of drought and wildfire due to climate change in southern California over the last two decades.
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