CLOUDCUCKOOLAND

YEAR: 2024
MEDIUM: Video installation, puppets
FUNDING: Media Art Friesland

Through a compilation of short film experiments, we encounter a group of extinct birds in their puppet afterlives.

A mishmash flock dance a ritual dance around a maypole, a Carolina Parakeet egg breaks out of the theatre stage, a Guam Kingfisher sings in riddles, a Norfolk Kaka learns to fly and and a Paradise Parrot awakens from her deathly slumber to discover she is a skeleton.

Informed by research into their extinction stories, I experimented with ways that the Trickster figure could rewrite and reimagine the birds’ violent endings. Guided by Saidiya Hartman’s notion of ‘critical fabulation’, I asked myself how, in their afterlives, can I tell their stories without replicating the grammar of violence?

Credits
Camera and sound design: Alex Wight.
Puppet performers: Boudewijn Buitenhek, Ellen van Dongen, Cara Farnan, Raquel Coll Juncosa, Arjan Kooman, Ghazale Moqanaki, Ewan McSorley, Ruhin Ruba.