kra: kra crowfulness was an exhibition about the corvus genus, also known as the crow family, showing joined and individual works by Marie Dahl and Rikke Aamann. Both artists had rooms designated to their individual art, while showing joint works in a myth room and a fact room.
The exhibition was the culmination of extensive zoological, anthropological and cultural research.
Crow said to Christ
8 speakers/amplifiers.
Bird mobiles: wood and string.
Crow said to Christ is an 8-channel sound installation of a song by Marie Dahl. Vocals, harmonies and guitar distributed to eight different kinds of speakers and guitar amplifiers, to create different sound experiences according to position in the room. Crow mobiles hanging from the ceiling combine objects and sound, shaping the room as a whole. Further, they animate people to move around in the installation. The lyrics of the song mime folktales and fables, whereas the composition echoes the long sung narratives of the ancient Greeks or from medieval Europe. The guitar changes between two chords, in the style of American finger-picking from traditionals and blues, creating an almost trance like vibe.
The song tells the story of a crow telling the crucified Christ about its own changing roles within religion. The crow, as both a trickster and an intelligent creature, questions Jesus and Christianity as such but is still empathetic: they share the same father – the sky. Hence, the crow and its murder will perform their funeral ritual. In what many believes to be a funeral ritual, the murder of crows gathers around the deceased, first cawing loudly, then falling silent. While the murder repeats this action daily for 3 to 4 days, the dead bird’s mate will return alone to perform the ritual for an even longer period.
Sedna’s Nest
Metal netting/seagrass and seaweeds/objects.
Sedna’s Nest, 70 cm/ø is a sculpture of an oversized bird’s nest in seaweeds and kelp woven into netting. Found objects from the sea is placed in the nest. The inspiration comes from the Inuit myth about Sedna, goddess of the sea. Sedna was forced to marry a man, who in fact was a raven, shapeshifting into a man. Living in a nest on a rock in the middle of the ocean, she decided to escape as her father came to visit. When Raven saw them in the kayak, he and his murder basked their wings so fiercely that the father pushed his daughter into the ice cold water to save his own life. As Sedna clung to her father’s kayak, he chopped off her fingers. As she fell to the bottom of the ocean her fingers turned into the first marine mammals and she became the goddess of the sea.
Murder of Crows
4 projectors.
4 speakers.
Video installation with 4 projectors and speakers.
Four projections of a big murder of loudly cawing crows, all flying in one direction creating a circling effect. A murder, is the name of a group of crows.
Myth Room
Photo/print/drawing/painting/string.
Collaboration with Rikke Aamann.
With myths as our chronological starting point, Marie Dahl and Rikke Aamann collected fables; fairy tales; folktales; poems; short stories; novels and sayings to show the extraordinary role, corvus family has played, and still plays, in narratives and, accordingly, in human consciousness. The displayed texts are connected with red string to their point of origin on a world map. Black strings connect the narratives by theme and topoi, as well as role and character of the corvus. What becomes visible is the changing role of the corvus in narratives, how myths about crows and ravens trace the early movement of indigenous people, an early great knowledge of this particular genus of birds that seems to have been undermined by science, the change from polytheistic to monotheistic religions, and the universal and existential key questions that all human beings throughout time have tried to answer – often through stories about the crow or raven. These narratives tell us many things about the crow, but just as many about ourselves. The space is an ongoing process. The body of work exhibited in WestGermany was only a small part of our research catalogue and own complementary work. However, the material will continue to grow, as new and old stories are found or written.
Fact Room
Photo/print/drawing.
The research for the fact room was, like the research for the myth room, an ongoing process. The factual aspect was fascinating and one of the important reasons for our decision to start the “crowfulness” project. The crow family’s zoology is exceptionally interesting, as is the many studies of the birds’ intelligence, high level of communication and exceptional memory, not to mention the mutual observation between corvus and human.
When contemplating modern societies looking at the natural world, the European 19th century’s diligent taxonomy and classification that described and categorised the corvus genus is an interesting cultural phenomena. Further, human beings seem to recognise many habits and social structures of the crow family, which has a semantic effect on the science that is worthy of note.
Exhibition Catalogue
