A WORK IN PUBLIC SPACE BY THOMAS HIRSCHHORN, PRODUCED BY DIA ART FOUNDATION NEW YORK
LOCATED AT FOREST HOUSES, THE BRONX - NEW YORK CITY, SUMMER 2013
The initiative to put black paper silhouettes of birds on the windows of the library
and the exhibition marked the end of a daylong saga with a sparrow that took an unusual
flight path and spent a couple hours looking for an escape route. We have seen our
share of melodrama with the urban ecology starting with the wobbly squirrel that
fell down from a tree during opening day or the dragonfly that overestimated the
coolness of the newspaper editors. Architecture, like human presence, is a normative
force that triggers stumbling appearances and arbitrary interactions with the animal
and vegetable kingdom. But some solace can be taken from this hide-and-seek game,
that is, that at the heart of the project of “co-existence” is both respect and care.
