About the works

Chronicle of Extinction, made for this exhibition, marks the start of a new series of work for Kirsten Palz, while remaining true to her conceptual practice of “Sculpture as Writing”, encompassing her manuals, songbooks, and other text-based works. It is shown here in Points of Resistance together with her songbook Below the Sun (2020), both addressing the devastating impacts of mankind upon our planet. With the format of the songbook invoking the choral traditions of church music, both works together are a cry against the ecological devastation mankind is wreaking upon our planet; it is a song of mourning for the disappeared and still disappearing species that once inhabited this earth with us; it is a needed reminder; a sad farewell.

Artist statement

Below the Sun (2020) was written against the backdrop of rising global temperatures. The score’s theme centers on the sun as the most powerful energy resource in our solar-system and its relationship to ancient mythology and modern science. On Christmas Day 1968, the Apollo 17 mission delivered a complete photographic image of the Earth, which went down in history as the "Blue Marble". The visual depiction showed a fragile, glassy-looking object and its implication was responsible for a growing ecological awareness in the decades that followed. However, more than 50 years later, human impact on the planet through consumerism and environmental destruction has brought the world's ecology onto the verge of destruction. Below the Sun was written against the backdrop of rising global temperature. It’s a song about the sun as the most powerful energy resource in our solar-system. Further more, the sun with its voluminous burning mass, was central for ancient mythology and modern science alike.

Chronicle of Extinction (2021) consists of twelve individual editions that form the beginning of an ongoing archive. Each of the twelve editions lists twelve extinct species. The applied scientific classification system compiles information on kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species for each extinct member.

The first selection, presented as part of Points of Resistance, comprises:

VOID 01 ACTINOPTERYGII ray-finned fishes

VOID 02 AMPHIBIA shrub frogs

VOID 03 AVES birds

VOID 04 AVES birds

VOID 05 BIVALVIA molluscs

VOID 06 GASTROPODA snails and land slugs

VOID 07 INSECTA owlet moths

VOID 08 LILIOPSIDA lilies

VOID 09 MAGNOLIOPSIDA flowering plants

VOID 10 MAGNOLIOPSIDA flowering plants

VOID 11 MAMMALIA rodents

VOID 12 REPTILIA reptiles

Each extinction creates a void.

Each extinction is irreversible.