The following text was created as an accompaniment to the exhibition LIFE IN STILL LIFE, the culmination of the project of the same name, which in the form of field trips and participatory eventsis striving to revive the long-neglected Zátiší site in Vodňany, South Bohemia. We are publishing the text here due to its more general validity - the ideas contained in it can be applied to any place on Earth.
I have learned a lot over the years of studying birds, but the most important lesson is that I have stopped perceiving individual living creatures, and the places they enliven with their presence, as isolated entities and objects.
Still life could hardly be the place it is if it weren't for the wider horizon of the world. If it weren't for nearby Vodňany. Vodňany ponds. Blanica River. Skočice Castle. Winds that circle the entire world. Rains that arise anywhere. The sun, whose age surpasses everything by so much.
Birds – like the wind, of which most of them are the embodiment – fly wherever they please: take a bath in your own wayAs we follow their paths, often thousands of kilometers long, across mountains and oceans, forests, glaciers, gorges and deserts, invisible threads emerge before our eyes that weave the entire world together.
Few people would think of Still Life in relation to Africa or Asia, but it is not nonsense. When migratory birds arrive in the spring to nest here, or at least roam nearby, Still Life becomes part of their world-traveling story or topography. An imaginary bridge, a connection, is created here. More precisely: it arises, it appears. And so, by observing them, we too can learn something not only about what constitutes a Still Life as a bounded space, but also about the world as such, its interconnectedness and unity.
Sometimes such a broad perspective is necessary.
For example, it is impossible to talk about the African oryx without taking into account the African wildernesses in which it spends most of the year, or even its distant Australian origin – all of which is oriole, by that (and through that) happening.
When I decide to understand birds, it is not enough to recognize their colors and shapes and voices, their living form. That is only a small part of the whole process. In the end, it is much more important to see it all anchored in relationships – without them all movement and life disappear, blowing. In relation to vegetation, soil profile, geological subsoil, altitude, deep and recent history of a given place or region, length of sunshine, weather and long-term climate or local acoustic qualities. All this is necessary if we strive for comprehensive knowledge – and this is not only true for birds, but for any phenomenon that we set out to learn about.
The next time you see a sparrow, a robin, or a blackbird in Still Life, try to imagine them in similar relationships. If you are attentive enough, the whole Earth will speak to you through their behavior, their voices, their habits, and their culture – that is, what is passed down, adopted, supplemented, and carried over time across generations.
By trying to understand birds, however, you not only learn about the distant, but also about the near – specifically, the nature of the place. It is impossible to exist in this world without the places we inhabit being reflected in our personalities and our behavior, even our speech; it is impossible to detach oneself from the place, to pretend that I am not in some way local. Whoever was born in the forest carries the forest within him. Even if we do not show the slightest interest in our surroundings, we will still be a given place of penetration – this is also one of the levels of meaning of the lesson that the external always also represents the internal (and vice versa). Of course, it is no different with birds, because they also form an essential part of the character of a place. If we want to truly understand a place, in our case Zátiší, in depth, we must not leave out the birds.
The birds that you can see or hear in Zátiší are not only typical (or ideal) representatives of their species, they are also and above all individualities. You will not find them anywhere else. such red or blue, such song thrush. Nowhere else will you find just this one the black-headed warbler, which mixes phrases from the song of the common nightingale into its singing (to listen to here).
In terms of bird species richness, Zátiší is relatively poor. You won't see a rock wallaby or a variegated woodpecker here, although even that can easily change in a few thousand or million years - the world around us is only seemingly unchanging. However, if we look at it from the point of view of individuality, i.e. intraspecific diversity, the situation is more favorable.
You won't find two great tits that behave identically. And you won't find another Still Life either.