21 Mar 2008 to 3 May 2008
Hours: Thursday & Saturday, 12-5 pm
Opening: Friday, March 21, 6-9 pm
Urban Culture Project at PARAGRAPH
23 E 12TH STREET
MO 64108
Kansas City, MO
Missouri
North America
p: 1 816 221 5115
m:
f:
w: www.urbancultureproject.org
Teach the Starlings in Kansas City A project by Brian Collier Paragraph | 23 East 12th Street 816.221.5115 Opening: Friday, March 21, 6-9 pm Starling teaching tour: Saturday, April 12, 1 pm, departing from Paragraph gallery March 21-May 3, 2008 Hours: Thursdays & Saturdays, 12-5 pm
Third Friday Reception: April 18, 6-9 pm
Brian Collier's projects, installations, and public interventions range across a wide variety of media, including websites, video, sculpture, photography, drawing, artist's books, and performance. His diverse practice focuses on investigating ways in which elements of the natural world exist, or have reinserted themselves, in severely human-altered habitats. Through his projects, he disseminates information about these sites, often proposing strategies to enhance or simply embrace the weedy margins of the contemporary landscape.
Collier’s Teach the Starlings in Kansas City is the latest incarnation of a multi-faceted, ongoing project that begins with the story of one of the most spectacular ecological disruptions ever perpetrated by an individual, the introduction of the European starling to North America. The starling population has grown from the initial 60 birds introduced in 1890 into NYC’s Central Park to an estimated population of well over 200 million.
It is a little known fact that starlings are extremely adept at visual mimicry, rivaling parrots in their ability to mimic human speech. Based on this fact, Collier has developed a program designed to teach European Starlings to say the name of the man who is primarily responsible for propagating this invasion, a wealthy and eccentric pharmaceutical manufacturer named Eugene Schieffelin. Through a program combining the dissemination of the starling story, the construction and installation of audio-rigged “teaching” nest boxes and feeding stations, and direct teaching methods, Collier exploits the starling’s mimicry ability to turn them from unwanted pests into living advertisements for both their own history in North America and the devastating effects of misdirected ecological intervention.
Paragraph gallery will present framed photographs, videos, maps, and interactive models of the starling teaching devices. Additionally, the gallery will be used as a base of operations for tours of starling locations around Kansas City.
*** On Saturday, April 12, the public is invited to join BD Collier for a starling-focused walking tour of downtown Kansas City. Attendees will begin by learning how to identify starlings and find out where they commonly roost and nest. The group will also collectively work to teach the starlings encountered along the way to say the name of the man who introduced them into North America, Schieffelin. Free and open to the public; no reservations required.
Collier has exhibited widely in solo and group shows in the US and abroad. A partial list of exhibition venues includes Neues Museum Weserberg Bremen, in Bremen, Germany; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO; Rowland Contemporary, Chicago, IL; Contemporary Art Center, North Adams, MA; Alice C. Sabatini Gallery, Topeka, KS; Washington University, St. Louis, MO; Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, Havana, Cuba; CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, NY; and Galería Raúl Martínez, Havana, Cuba. He has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the City of Bloomington Cultural District Commission . Collier earned his MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007 and his BFA from State University of New York at Buffalo in 1993. He is an Instructor in the Interdisciplinary department at Kansas City Art Institute.
Visit http://www.briandcollier.com/ for more information about Collier’s work, and http://teachstarlings.societyrne.net for more about the Starling project.
Public Programs in conjunction with Teach the Starlings:
Teach the Starlings: A Walking Tour with BD Collier Saturday, April 12, 1 pm Departing from Paragraph Gallery 23 East 12th Street, KCMO 64105 Join amateur ornithologist, re-naturalist, bird enthusiast and spatial practitioner BD Collier on a starling teaching tour of downtown Kansas City. Participants will learn some interesting facts about European starlings including how to locate and identify them. We will also be collectively teaching starlings how to say the name of the man who introduced them into North America, “Schieffelin,” using the shouting technique. There will be several basic bullhorns for use by participants and materials to make your own paper bullhorn.
Teach the Starlings: A Lecture Tuesday, April 22, 7 pm Paragraph Gallery 23 East 12th Street, KCMO 64105 BD Collier will speak about the history of European starlings in North America and his project to teach starlings how to say the name of the man who introduced them into the country, Scieffelin. After the talk he will be available to answer questions about his exhibition at Paragraph, the larger project, and how to get involved.
