Symphony for Absent Wildlife | Spirits of Alberta

Under the title Symphony for Absent Wildlife Professor Lucy Orta has created a true ode to wildlife, taking the form of a visual and audio installation, presented at the Nuit Blanche in Calgary in Canada, curated by Wayne Baerwaldt.

In Symphony for Absent Wildlife, the stretcher-bed - an occurring metaphoric object in Orta’s practice - marks a pathway to woodland clearing, composed of weathered tree trunks sourced from local forests, an essential zone for the maintenance of forestry biodiversity. The path is raised above the ground by the means of simple wooden trestles, the kind constructed for chopping wood.
In the clearing, we encounter a masked orchestra of Spirits. Each Spirit musician dons a mask in the form of a woodland creature, and an iconic tailcoat tailored from reclaimed felt blankets that bare the inscriptions of past warriors and homeless wanderers. The blanket represents an element of exchange between First Nation communities and the first European traders and settlers, and it became a 'democratic' item of clothing. Wearing blankets, Orta's foreboding masked figures recall the spirits of the once abundant wildlife across the Albertan plains: bison, moose, wapiti, wolves, grizzly bears, and eagles.
The music stands illuminate a graphic score, the conductor guides the masked-animal musicians, and the performance commences. An amplified symphony of avian chatter - birdsong - resonates across the city. Man or beast? Just simple hand crafted bird whistles that replicate the remarkable sounds of nature. Symphony for Absent Wildlife brings a fragment of the disappearing natural environment, its sounds and the diversity of its fauna, closer to the city.

Research was undertaken in the Glenbow Museum Calgary, and included discussions with local inhabitants, academics and students from Alberta College of Art and Design. The process was complemented by a 6-month workshop with the graduate community at the University of the Arts London.