Choreographies towards loss - Irene Margrethe Kaltenborn MFA Exhibition

Irene Margrethe Kaltenborn - Choreographies towards loss 

If human-made extinction was a choreography, this is how we have performed it. The Great Auk was the original penguin, but disappeared in the mid 19th century. Stories and observations are woven together to create a narrative that floats between two worlds, in which the Great Auk becomes a symbol of a much larger and more urgent situation. 

This is the description of the film Choreographies towards loss (60 min), which is the centrepiece of the exhibition with the same title. Drawing a thread from past events to the ongoing biodiversity crisis, the exhibition deals with loss. In the process of making the film, the artist travelled to meet various people and places with a connection to the extinct bird, from the home of the author of The Great Auk in England to the old Zoological Museum in Copenhagen, where the entrails of the last two Great Auks are kept in glass jars. The story is interwoven with close-up portraits of various seabirds taken with a Super-8 camera from Hornøya, Norway's easternmost point and a bird sanctuary. They are all endangered, and through small moments captured on film, it is as if they have already become a memory. 

The function of the gallery is to be void left by the Great Auk when they were declared extinct. The film becomes the memory of the species, while the surrounding structures remain hollow and almost empty of content. In this emptiness there is a sense of loss, as if we have lost something inside and outside ourselves that cannot be replaced.

A film starts every full hour 

The Exhibition opens: 

Friday August 9th, 17.00-20.00

Viewing hours:  

Wed-Fri  12.00-18.00
Sat-Sun  12.00-16.00

Or by appointment: irenekaltenborn [at] gmail [dot] com (irenekaltenborn[at]gmail[dot]com)