Jorge Luis Borges, epilogue to "The Maker," in Dreamtigers, trans. Mildred Bover and Harold Morland (New York: Dutton & Co., 1970), 22. ︎︎︎
"Disappearing Legacies: The World As Forest," Centrum für Naturkunde, Universität Hamburg, November 9, 2017-March 28, 2018: Tieranatomisches Theater, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, April 26-August 28, 2018; Zentralmagazin Naturwissenschaftlicher Sammlungen, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle Wittenberg, October 20-December 14, 2018. For extensive documentation, see Reassembling Nature.org.︎︎︎
Julia Voss and Sahotra Sarkar, "Depictions as Surrogates for Places: From Wallace's Biogeography to Koch's Dioramas, Philosophy & Geography 6, no. I (2010):59-81.︎︎︎
On the role of the conceptual persona, see Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson, Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia, 1996). ︎︎︎
5 The artists in the exhibition included Maria Thereza Alves, Ursula Biemann, Bik Van der Pol, Shannon Lee Castleman, Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen, Mark Dion, Irendra Radjawali/Akademi Drone Indonesia, Armin Linke with Giulia Bruno and Giuseppe Ielasi, Barbara Marcel, Julian Oliver & Crystelle Vu, Robert Zhao Renhui/The Institute of Critical Zoolo gists, SHIMURAbros, Paulo Tavares/ autonoma, and Yayasan Peta Bencana.︎︎︎
For more, see the "Curators' Introduction," in the exhibition guide, Disappearing Legacies: The World As Forest (Berlin: K. Verlag, 2018), 45.︎︎︎
Razmig Keuchevan, Nature Is a Bartlefield (London: Polity Press, 2016), 2.︎︎︎
Paulo Tavares, "The Geological Imperative," in Architecture in the Anthropocene, ed. Etienne Turpin (Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press, 2013), 209-40. On the relation of coloniality/modernity, see Anibal Quijano, "Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality," in Globalization and the Decolonial Option, ed. Walter D. Mignolo and Arturo Escobar (London: Routledge, 2010), 22-32; and, Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018).︎︎︎
Rick De Vos, "Extinction in a Distant
Land: The Question of Elliot's Bird of Paradise," in Extinction Studies: Stories of Time, Death, and Generations, ed. Deborah Bird Rose, Thom van Dooren, and Matthew Chrulew (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 108-9. ︎︎︎
Paul Lawrence Farber, "The Development of Taxidermy and the History of Ornithology," Isis 68, no. 4 (December 1977):550-66. ︎︎︎
Although the use of arsenic in the preparation of specimens was invented by Jean-Baptiste Bécoeur around the time of Turgot's publication, but was not made known through any publication until 1800. ︎︎︎
On the cultural significance of birds-of
paradise on New Guinea and nearby islands, including precolonial, Indigenous, and colonial contexts, see Christopher Healey, "Folk Taxonomy and Mythology of Birds of Paradise in the New Guinea Highlands," Ethnology 32, no. 1 (1993) 19-34; and, Pamela Swadling, Plumes from Paradise: Trade Cycles in Outer Southeast Asia and Their Impact on New Guinea and Nearby Islands until 1920 (Boroko: Papua New Guinea National Museum, 1996); on the aesthetic evolution of bird of paradise recreations in European Renaissance and Enlighten ment ornithology, see Anna-Sophie
Springer, "Inter folia, aves: Reading Bird Books as Curatorial-Editorial Constella tions," in Publishing as Artistic Practice, ed. Annette Gilbert (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016), 134-52.︎︎︎
The surgeon and naturalist René
Primevère Lesson was part of a French royal mission to the Southern hemisphere aboard the former cavalry barge La Coquille. See R. P. Lesson, Histoire naturelle des oiseaux de paradis et des épimaques; Ouvrage orné de planches, dessinées par les meilleurs artistes (Paris: Arthus Bertrand Libraire, 1834-35).︎︎︎
De Vos, “Extinction in a Distant Land,” 92.︎︎︎
On the complex and entangled significance of extinction, see De Vos, 89-115.︎︎︎
For a detailed overview and related statistics see, Pamela Swadling, “Plume
Trade: The Demands of Fashion Conscious European Women and the Growth of the Conservation Movement,” in Plumes from Paradise, 83-107. See also, Robert Cribb, “Birds of Paradise and Environmental Politics in Colonial Indonesia, 1890-1931,”in Paper Landscapes: Explorations in the Environmental History of Indonesia (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1997), 379-408.︎︎︎
Alfred Russel Wallace, letter to Samuel Stevens, October 29, 1858.︎︎︎
For a profound reflection on encounters among birds of paradise, locals, and foreign visitors, see Anna Tsing's essay “The Sociality of Birds: Reflections on Ontological Edge Effects,” in intercalations 6: These Birds of Temptation, ed. Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin (Berlin: K. Verlag, 2021); the essay is a version of Tsing's keynote lecture delivered at the Hamburg version of the exhibition on March 26, 2018︎︎︎
A.R.Wallace to Samuel Stevens, from Batchian, Moluccas on October 29, 1858, see “Extract from a Letter of Mr. A.R. Wallace to Mr. S. Stevens (S48: 1859),” The Alfred Russel Wallace Page, https:// people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S048.htm. ︎︎︎
A.R.Wallace, The Malay Archipelago (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 47. ︎︎︎
Jeremy Vetter, “Politics, Paternalism, and Progressive Social Evolution: Observa tions on Colonial Policy in the Scientific Travels of Alfred Russel Wallace,” Victorian Review 41, no. 2 (2015): 118. ︎︎︎
Corey Ross, Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire: Europe and the Transformation of the Tropical World (Oxford: Oxford University
Press), 15. ︎︎︎
For detailed research about the routes, vehicles, and duration mail took from the Dutch East Indies to London, see John Langdon Brooks, Just before the Origin: Alfred Russel Vallace's Theory of Evolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 252-57.︎︎︎
On museum purchases and collectors distribution of Wallace's specimens, see Earl of Cranbrook and Darren Mann, “Alfred Russel Wallace and His Collections in the Malay Archipelago, with a Proposal for International Cooperation to Produce a Catalogue,” in Naturalists, Explorers and Field Scientists in South-East Asia and Australasia, ed. Indraneli Das and Andrew Alek Tuen (Basel: Springer International Publishing, 2016), 15-50. ︎︎︎
A. R. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago (1869) (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 1989), 448-49. ︎︎︎
Thom van Dooren, Flight Ways: Life and
Loss at the Edge of Extinction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). ︎︎︎
Laurie Laybourn-Langton, “It's No Longer Climate Change We're Living Through: It's Environmental Breakdown,” New Statesman, February 12, 2019, http://www.newstatesman.com/politics /staggers/2019/02/it-s-no-longer-climate -change-we-re-living-through-it-s-environmental.︎︎︎
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of
Epistemologies of the South (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 87; see esp. 97-102, 166-83. “Corazonar,” or the “warming up of reason,” is a portmanteau concept combining corazon/heart and razon/reason that is used in the Indige nous struggles of Andean South America. It argues for the lived and embodied relevance of emotions, affects, and feelings in the production of knowledge and reason, leading to a subjectivity that conceives of the world as a personal responsibility. ︎︎︎
M. Grooten, R. E. A Almond, eds., Living Planer Report 2018: Aiming Higher (Gland, Switzerland: WWF, 2018), https://c402277.ssl.cfl.rackcdn.com/publications/1187/files/original/LPR2018 Full Report Spreads.pdf. ︎︎︎
Hans Nicholas Jong, “In Eastern Indonesia a Forest Tribe Pushes Back against Miners and Loggers,” Mongabay March 5, 2018, http://www.news.mongabay.com/2018/03/in-eastern -indonesia-a-forest-tribe-pushes-back-against-miners-and-loggers. ︎︎︎
Clarice Lispector, Aqua Viva (1973) (New York: New Direction Books, 2012), 52. ︎︎︎
Including the early contributions by German thinkers and scientists such as Immanuel Kant and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach made to discourses about
eventually fatal issues such as “race.” ︎︎︎
On the resistance against this colonization, see Peter Hempenstall, Pacific Islanders under German Rule: A Study in the Meaning of Colonial Resistance (Canberra: ANU Press, 2016). ︎︎︎
See Otto Finsch, Samoafahrten: Reisen in Kaiser Wilhelms-Land und Englisch-Neu- Guinea in den Jahren 1884 und 1885 an Bord des Deutschen Dampfers "Samoa" (Leipzig: Ferdinand Hirt & Sohn, 1888), 7. ︎︎︎
See Otto Finsch, "Wie ich Kaiser Wilhelmsland erwarb," in Deutsche Monatsschrift für das gesamte Leben der Gegenwart, vol. 9 (1902), 406-24; vol. 10 (1902), 570-84; vol. 11 (1902), 728-43; vol. 12 Berlin: Alexander Dunckner, 1902). 875-89; Otto Finsch, "Kaiser Wilhelms Land: Eine friedliche Kolonialbewer bung. Separatabdruck aus Lohmeyer Wislicenus "Auf weiter Fahrt," Deutsche Marine- und Kolonialbibliothek, Band IV (Leipzig: Wilhelm Weicher, 1905); Hans Fischer, Die Hamburger Südsee-Expedition: Uber Ethnographie und Kolonialismus (Frankfurt: Syndikat, 1981); Stewart Firth, New Guinea under the Germans (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1982). ︎︎︎
Otto Finsch and Adolf Bernhard Meyer, “Vögel von Neu Guinea: Zumeist aus der Alpenregion am Südostabhange des Owen Stanley-Gebirges (Hufsteingebirge, 7000–8000' hoch), gesammelt von Karl Hunstein. I. Paradiseidae,” Zeitschrift für die gesammte Ornithologie 3 (1885):369-91. ︎︎︎
A.B. Mever, ed., Charles Darwin und Alfred
Russel Wallace. Ihre ersten Publicationen über die Entstehung der Arten, nebst einer Skisse ihres Lebens und einem Verzeichniss ihrer Schriften mit Autorisation Heraus gegeben von Dr. Adolf Bernhard Meyer
(Erlangen: Eduard Besold, 1870). ︎︎︎
The most extensive portraits of Finsch
and Meyer are researched in Hilary Howes, The Race Question in Oceania: A.B. Mever and Otro Firsch between Metropolitan Theory and Field Experience, 1865-1914 (New York: Peter Lang, 2013). ︎︎︎
Today, four vitrines of this type
are among the permanent exhibition furniture on the ground floor of the Tieranatomisches Theater, Berlin, the second venue of “Disappearing Legacies.” Built in 1789, the building's original purpose was as animal anatomy theater where members of the Prussian cavalry were taught veterinary medicine by dissecting horses. ︎︎︎
Anna Tsing, “Earth Stalked by Man,” Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 34, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 13. ︎︎︎
A.R.Wallace, “On the Physical Geography of the Malay Archipelago,” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 33 (1863): 233–34. ︎︎︎
Sigmund Feud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1916-17), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. xvi, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1953-74), 285. ︎︎︎