IMAGINARY FLIGHTS
Real and Imaginary Flights (2020) A video lecture during Rupert Residency in Vilnius, Lithuania by Marija Nemčenko and Prof. Barbara Helm
In this performative video lecture, Prof. Barbara Helm in conversation with artist Marija Nemčenko discusses ideas surrounding the ongoing project LAK, where Marija traces the migratory routes of the white storks as well as their role in cultural, political and environmental contexts in Lithuania, Palestine and Sudan.
With the symbol of a white stork being widely used from nature NGOs’ logos to tattoos symbolising flights of freedom, it is becoming further and further removed from a living bird, whose living conditions and movement paths are intricately woven with political, economic and therefore environmental circumstances of our planet. During the lecture, the two women will discuss how fictionalising bird migration affects their realities.
Barbara Helm is a professor of Biological Rhythms of Natural Organisms, at Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences (GELIFES), University of Groningen. She is also a visiting professor at the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine (IBAHCM), University of Glasgow, UK. From her childhood, Barbara has been fascinated by birds, and in particular their migrations. During her studies in Germany and the USA, she picked up a similar fascination with biological rhythms, i.e., the ways organisms from unicells to humans have embodied clocks. Her current research has a focus on migration and time-keeping, with a heavy focus on birds, which Barbara studies in the wild and captivity. The expert timekeeping of migratory birds, which works over daunting spatial and temporal scales, makes them particularly vulnerable to global change, and Prof. Helm worries about how birds can respond to rapidly altered environmental conditions.