Some Spells Are Bigger, 2020-present
Some Spells Are Bigger is an exploration of being, loss, and agency and stems from research I conducted as a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow at the National Bird Collection in the Division of Birds at the National Museum of Natural History.* This archive houses over 640,000 specimens––the third largest bird collection in the world––including an “Extinct Collection” that is kept in a high security, climate-controlled vault.
This ongoing series of photographic composites emerged as a way to process my experiences in the collections and as a way to try and make sense of what it means to archive other beings. I combine imagery taken at the National Bird Collection with field-based photographic research as well as scans of mixed media collages from my sketchbook––my own archive of symbols focused on survey markers, alarms, signals, and conduit lines. The work is also the result of grappling with knowledge systems that understand interspecies relationships differently and is influenced by individuals such as Dakota philosopher Vine Deloria, Jr., who states, “In order to maintain relationships, you do certain things to show respect among beings. Another way of saying it is that these are kin relationships. You are related to different lifeforms in different ways.”
In a sense, Some Spells Are Bigger seeks to put the individual birds I have encountered in the archive back into the world as messengers, and through a kind of reanimation asks us all to consider more deeply the worlds we inhabit and co-create. I have the uncanny sense that these beings are speaking to us across time. They are certainly more than mere “skins” to be studied and archived. Even from the vault they are our kin –– watching, warning, and signaling us to radically reconsider the role humanity plays in a more-than-human world.
Vine Deloria Jr., Spirit & Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr. Reader, eds. Barbara Deloria, Foehner, K. Scinta, S (Golden: Fulcrum Publishing, 1999)
* Research conducted in collaboration with Frank Ekeberg and Gwyneira Isaac as a part of Birding the Future.
