| In the Museum of Extinction Catalogue essay for tick tock: eight artists look at extinction City of Melbourne/Melbourne Observatory 2002 Curated by Marian Crawford The Museum of Extinction is an imposing building on its isolated hilltop. Walking up wide stone steps we approach the massive columns of the museum's neo-classical portico. The building is an embodiment of civic values, enduring, stately, confident. Yet it is a melancholy place, for the collections and displays of the Museum of Extinction all nurture the memory of that which no longer exists. In the foyer “Then might those genera of animals return, of which the memorials are preserved in the ancient rocks of our continents." Charles Lyell Principles of geology (1833) In the foyer, after we have paid for our tickets and deposited our bags, we look closely at the orientation signs and maps. The Salon of Delusive Teleology sounds good, and we are also tempted by the Gallery of Irretrievable Knowledge, or the Endangered & Threatened Species Interactive; then there is the Alvarez Suite, where extinction rates of modern times are compared with pre-historic extinction events, both gradual and catastrophic, with speculation as to their causes. There's even a section, the Borges Collection, devoted to extinct imaginary animals. At 2pm in the Malthusian Theatre there is a forum on environmental ethics titled "Species: individual organism, collective entity or arbitrary artefact?" The Fragment & Remnant Study Rooms in the basement are of special interest to the archivists and antiquarians among us. So much to see! In the end, as so often, we decide to go where whim takes us. The Salon of Delusive Teleology "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Genesis I v. 26 In this space we can move through a three-dimensional holographic representation of the history of life on earth, in time and space. It's humbling to see how many and varied are the forms of life which have evolved, survived or become extinct in 3.5 billion years since the evolution of the earliest prokaryotic single-celled organisms. The forms remaining on the earth today seem comparatively impoverished. And here, making a very modest show amid the tangled proliferation, multiplication and cessation of species, is the lineage of the human. How recent we are, how fragile and contingent! Random events could easily have wiped out our vulnerable species. We like to assume that human consciousness is a high point in the drive of evolution from the 'primitive' to the 'complex'. But look at the history of the origin of species once again. It is a story of unpredictable events, not of an orderly movement towards higher consciousness. Some early stages in the evolution of life the Cambrian Burgess Shale, for example, of 500 million years ago- contained the most rich variety of form. Bizarre body patterns of crustaceans arose then in great abundance, and extinctions selected the few that remain today. In the darkness of this room, amid flickering filaments of light, we learn that the inevitability of human consciousness is an illusion; it comforts us but has no basis in fact. It seems that a series of random trials and contingent events led to us humans and to our dominance of this planet. Replay the tape, and we humans never appear. The Gallery of Irretrievable Knowledge "The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious all-pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds." Thomas Malthus Essay on the principle of population (1798) Displays in this gallery visualise and animate the movement of the human species around the globe. We learn that widespread extinction of species by humans does not date, as we might intuitively think, from recent industrial modernity, or from the age of exploration. It seems that humans started to spread from Africa into the habitable zones of the world around 50,000 years ago. Extinctions inexorably followed in each new continent. A prehistoric megafauna- the world of giant mammals, marsupials, reptiles and birds- was exterminated. As technologies developed, humans migrated into ever more inaccessible places, into isolated islands and extreme climate zones with their strange and specialized animal and bird life. The human population continues to grow, putting ever more pressure on the limited resources and marginal zones of the world. In this way habitats are exploited and fragmented, and their dependent species come under threat. Why preserve species- known and unknown- from extinction? Does it really matter to the future of life on earth if we lose one little-regarded plant, if there is one less insignificant insect? Most current medicinal drugs derive from animals, plants and micro-organisms. The pharmaceutical potential of species yet to be identified is immense. Under-used food plants and resources of genetic variety could boost the three species of grain- wheat, maize and rice- on which the majority of the world's people depend for sustenance. The argument is one of self-interest, of the possible health and nourishment of the human population into the future. If selfishness leads us to destroy the world, perhaps our desire for self-preservation may save it. Fragment & Remnant Study Rooms "Perhaps the most remarkable instance of an immense bird population is that of the passenger pigeon of the United States... Why is this bird so extraordinarily abundant?" Alfred Russel Wallace On the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type (1858) In the basement, fragments and remnants of lost species are stored and catalogued, in Solander boxes, in formaldehyde or alcohol, in pressing frames. The faded copperplate handwriting on their accession labels details the place, time and circumstances of collection. Preserved in alcohol is the last Thylacine, a female who died of neglect in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. The gape of her jaw, her massive skull and her camouflage-striped coat make it clear that she was an impressive predator. Here is a taxidermy specimen of tiny, flightless Stephens Island Wren, a whole species exterminated by one single lighthouse-keeper's cat. A mummified Upland Moa, lumbering and flightless, last survivor of eleven species of moa hunted to extinction in Aotearoa by the sixteenth century. The moth-eaten head of a Dodo of Mauritius, a bird which represents the bizarre evolutionary paths of isolated fauna. A sort of monstrous pigeon, flightless and fearless, it was easy prey for sailors and introduced predators. Skins of the Passenger Pigeon whose uncountable migrating flocks darkened the sky over eastern North America, hunted to extinction by 1914. In one section of the Study Rooms scientists work on DNA sequencing of the genomes of extinct life forms, analysing fragments of preserved skin and hair. Perhaps the most precious species will one day be re-created through gene reconstruction and cloning. Contained in a single genome- in every cell of every organism- is a database equivalent to three or four times the 30 volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Computers powerful enough to manipulate this huge quantity of information contrast with those crumbling relics, the archive of lost species stored in this gloomy basement. Endangered & Threatened Species Interactive "No one I think can have marvelled more at the extinction of species, than I have done." Charles Darwin The origin of species (1859) At these interactive terminals we can play out some models of competing interests in the management of natural resources under pressure from human use. In the Tropical Rain Forest Simulation, we are surprised to find that if we select the ‘natural harvest’ option we make a profit of $729 per hectare from the edible and pharmaceutical products of untouched rainforest. Forest cleared for timber production and cattle ranching makes a profit of $339 per hectare. The Southern Ocean Simulation compares the long-term results of preservation, limited harvesting and unlimited exploitation of Antarctic species. By manipulating the relative populations of krill, icefish, seals, penguins and whales, game players discover that the decrease or increase of one species effects all other members of the ecosystem. In playing Ecological & Economic Strategies, we find out that the services provided by nature to humans as clean air, fresh water, soil creation, solar energy, and assimilation of waste have a monetary value many times more than all gross national products. Each session on this game ends with the reminder that “nature is not part of the economy, the economy is a part of nature." The Gift and Book Shop “These rock-basins, fringed by corallines... thronged with beautiful sensitive forms of life, -they exist no longer, they are all profaned, and emptied and vulgarized.” Edmund Gosse Father and son (1907) On the way out of the Museum of Extinction is the inevitable gift shop. Here is a T-shirt emblazoned with Thylacine, a tea towel decorated with Paradise Parrot, a teacup embellished with Crescent Nail-tailed Wallaby; yet some items are of real interest. Polished fragments of genuine weird Burgess Shale organisms, mounted on hardwood plinths, are one of the more expensive articles. A cast of a dinosaur footprint (too large for most lounge rooms) might look good as garden sculpture. There are 'living fossil' plants for sale, such as these new-release tissue culture scions of the Wollemi Pine. Above all we notice the works of art, modest in scale, intimate, using everyday materials. These artists express the intensity of their feeling for the natural world and natural materials. Works like these speak to an audience alienated by the complexities of science, the hegemony of economics, or the frustration of politics. With wit and insight these works show that contemporary artists take questions of environmental and social concern as their province, and address their audience in a language which engages the senses. Outside in the welcome sunshine we walk downhill from the Museum of Extinction, reflecting on the ways that the museum, by preserving, reconstructing and speculating, enables us to glimpse the lost life forms of the earth. In writing this essay I have referred to the following works: John Carey (ed) The Faber book of science London 1995 Robert Elliott Environmental ethics Oxford 1995 Tim Flannery & Peter Schouten A gap in nature: discovering the world's extinct animals Melbourne 2001 Stephen Jay Gould Wonderful life: the Burgess Shale and the nature of history London I991 David Quammen The song of the Dodo: island biogeography in an age of extinctions London 1997 Edward 0. Wilson “What is nature worth?” The Wilson Quarterly Winter 2002 Artists featured in tick tock: Alexis Beckett, Jennifer Brook, Marian Crawford, Kirsten Haydon, Hilary Jackman, Ruth Johnstone, Michael Schlitz, Rosie Weiss. |