Special screening of “Birds of America” at UGC Les Halles

COAL is partnering the evening screening of Birds of America, a documentary film by Jacques Loeuille, winner of the 2018 COAL Prize. The film retraces the journey of 19th-century naturalist Jean-Jacques Audubon, who set off to paint all the birds of the New Continent.
In the presence of director Jacques Loeuille, winner of the 2018 COAL Prize, producer Ariane Métais, Philippe de Grissac, Vice-President of LPO France and Lauranne Germond and Joan Pronnier from COAL.

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The film tells a political counter-history of the United States through the disappearing birds of the work of the French naturalist painter and father of American ecology, Jean-Jacques Audubon.

Synopsis: At the beginning of the 19th century, a French painter, Jean-Jacques Audubon, travelled around Louisiana to paint all the birds of the New Continent. The discovery of the great wilderness encourages the utopia of a young nation projecting itself into a world of unprecedented beauty. Since then, the American dream has been shattered, and Audubon’s work forms an archive of the skies before the industrial age. On the banks of the Mississippi, Birds of America retraces the steps of these birds, now extinct, and reveals another story of the national myth.

Produced by Météores Films and ARTE Cinéma, the feature film project received the Louis Lumière prize from the Institut Français, as well as support from the Centra National des Arts Plastiques (Image / Mouvement fund) and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is distributed by KMBO. Jacques Loeuille was the winner of the 2018 COAL Prize.

“I discovered Audubon when I was studying at the Fine Arts School in Nantes, the city where he grew up and drew his first birds on the banks of the Loire, before setting sail for the United States to escape the Napoleonic wars. While his work has long been a scientific reference, it is now a purely aesthetic object, as well as a documentary treasure trove, since many of the painted creatures have disappeared.” – Jacques Loeuille

“What is particularly poignant, in this age of fake news and the manipulation of scientific information, is that extinct birds are also the subject of a whole range of images and falsified or imaginary accounts: false testimonies, confusion of species, but also photo-montages and optical tricks. This aesthetic of the ‘fake’, through the faked or erroneous images of the ‘bird watcher’, will be present in the installation, in dialogue with Audubon’s paintings. In fact, the extreme precision and ‘high definition’ of Audubon’s images is an astonishing contrast to today’s images of birds, which are so poor and low definition by comparison. Should we see this as a vanity of technique and technology?” – Jacques Loeuille

“To compensate for these disappearances, oil companies invested in a mega-zoo and aquarium when the city of New Orleans was rebuilt after Katrina: Audubon Zoo and Audubon Aquarium of America.

The figure of Audubon has now become a precious symbol for anyone wishing to ‘green’ their own image at a lower cost. Audubon zoo recreates the “natural settings” of the “Birds of America” plates, where we can observe – among other things – a turtle-dove leaping from one plastic branch to another; the bird lives this existence in a very shallow glass cage whose surface corresponds to Audubon’s drawing sheet: a double elephant folio, or 98 by 76 centimetres! Further on, in the Audubon Aquarium of America, you can see a strange sight: sharks swim between the underwater frames of fake oil rigs. BP, Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil are all patrons of the centre, which is dedicated to children’s education.” – Jacques Loeuille

“New York City has decided to take artistic action to raise awareness of the current ravages of Washington’s environmental policy by commissioning artist Nicolas Holiber to create a series of sculptures inspired by endangered Audubon birds. I met him in the large studio he occupies in Brooklyn, where he sculpts these birds by assembling pieces of wood. In April 2019, twelve sculptures representing endangered birds will be installed along Broadway, from the heart of the city, in front of Lincoln Center at 67th Street, to the Audubon Parc Historic District in Washington Heights at 168th Street. They will remain there until winter 2020. The untreated nature of the recovered wood will put the sculptures to a severe test; the process of degradation by the climate is an integral part of the work.” – Jacques Loeuille