In honor of the amazing biodoversity of our planet, for the Remembrance Day for Lost Species on November 30th of this year, we put together an evening of poetry readings by Mikael Vogel, which portrayed the different stories of extinct species, underlined by visual art like the wood sculptures "Dead as a Dodo III" & "Dodo Greif" by sculptor Stephan Hüsch, a beautiful acrylic painting by illustrator Julia Beutling, an Animation of the extinct New Zealand "Huia" by open source animator Sam Muirhead, the book and scultpures of "Martha, die letzte Wandertaube" by Berlin illustrator ATAK, a series of extinct birds portrayed in the fashion of the year in which they went extinct, by Brian R. Williams and window drawings to promote the event and the topic of extinction in general by Jenni Ottilie, that's me :). Also we had invited Micha Reimer with his cooperative biodiversity board game "Ecogon", to give people the chance to play and take a closer look at the beautiful little illustrations of the game.
The event took place at the Baumhaus Berlin in Berlin Wedding, which is (still under construction and) a great neighborhood project, connecting people.
Because of the bad weather there were many people, that didn't make it, but the 30+ human beings that made, were able to enjoy this evening of surprising, touching, awkward and simply sad stories of the species that will probably be lost forever.
During the 1,5 days that I spent in behind the windows at the Baumhaus, drawing leaves, the Dodo and a poem by Mikael, I was able to observe how many people would stop by at the place, wanting to support and help, offer things to support it. Karen, the co-founder of the Baumhaus, told me, that sometimes it seems people think, they would be needy, so she said it's a gooddeed that we're decorating the windows, helping it look more artsy rather than a construction site gathering people ;) – Which by the way, is pretty amazing, that there are all these cool volunteers, offering their time and skill to build up this place, step by step… it's emerging. The roots have clearly grown and the wood work inside is becoming pretty epically beautiful :). I hope to do another project with Baumhaus soon again.
The Baumhaus Window Fronts before…
Getting started with some treehouse foilage…
