MARCUS COATES / Apology to the Great Auk, 2017
PRESENTING THE EKO 8 ART PROJECTS
MARCUS COATES / Apology to the Great Auk, 2017
digital video, 7 min 23 sec
The video Apology to the Great Auk (2017) is based on one of the most notorious episodes in natural history: the hunting to extinction by the middle of the nineteenth century, of the North Atlantic bird species the great auk, which was prized for its soft down. During the summer of 2017 Marcus Coates travelled to Fogo Island in Canada to ask for an official apology to be given the great auk (Pinguinus impennis), a flightless bird once numerous around the island, but extinct since 1844 due to excessive hunting.
The resulting film, Apology to the Great Auk documents a sincere attempt by the community of Fogo Island, through the specially appointed apology committee, to respond and learn from the loss of what can only now be imagined. The piece cuts between three different scenes: Coates meeting with the island’s mayor to get a formal statement of apology ratified; Coates chairing a committee of islanders to debate the language the document should be couched in; and the mayor publicly reading aloud the final draft, addressing the vanished birds themselves through a loudspeaker aimed out to sea. “Your extinction is a defining moment in the history of the world,” he intones, promising “to do all we can to protect the other auks, the birds and animals we share our territory with.”
Filmed on the Island of Fogo, Newfoundland, Canada. Produced in association with the Museum of the Flat Earth, Fogo Island, Canada
IN SEARCH OF THE QUAGGA AND OTHER EXTINCT SPECIES
2021
digital video, 39 mins, looped, no audio
Coates’ new video for EKO8 is an adaption and an updating of the series Extinct Animals, 2018, where he exhibited plaster sculptures in the form of different animal species whose extinctions were caused by humans. The artist had cast his own hands in poses that playfully recreate an approximation of the animal in its imagined shadow; each is a sincere and studied memorial of a lost species. In this new work, a video titled In search of the Quagga and other extinct species the artist uses his hands to recreate the shadows of the animals.
For Coates, this is an attempt to summon these animals back into life, with an implicit recognition of the futility of this resurrection. He says “the most we can know these animals is as relics of our own imagination.” Coates represents or ‘summons’ the following animals: Great auk, Caspian tiger, Quagga, Saudi gazelle, Laughing Owl, Labrador duck, Western Black Rhinoceros, Thylacine, Acorn pearly mussel, Pinta giant tortoise, Moa, Golden toad, Syrian elephant, Xerces blue butterfly, and Haast’s eagle.
At the core of Marcus Coates’ (b. 1968, UK) work is a relationship to the unknowable. From his attempts to become animal to his vicarious experiences on behalf of terminally ill patients he seeks to uncover degrees of understanding and knowing, testing our definitions and boundaries of autonomy. The form and purpose of his work continues to develop in consideration to society’s needs which he responds to by working with individuals, communities, institutions, organisations and the general public. In this way he sees aspects of his art practice as a necessary and pragmatic service.
