Migratory Restlessness, 2021
Installation view. Textile object, video. Mixed technique. Oil on silk.
Video duration 30’00

The Migratory Restlessness project is inspired by scientific research and experiments, and created in collaboration with the ornithologists from Rybachy biostation on the Curonian spit in the Baltic Sea. During the migration periods, birds feel Zugunruhe, a German word that means migratory restlessness, when the urge to move cannot be contained. In the course of scientific research of magnetoreception, ornithologists use so called Emlen funnels for testing bird orientation and navigation abilities. During migration, songbirds tend to hop in the direction in which they would be flying. The mean jumping direction of the birds are recorded on scratch-sensitive paper lining the inclined wall of the funnel. Developing the method of collaboration with nature, the project imitates the footprints of birds from these scientific experiments and represents the avian use of inner magnetic cues to determine heading direction and location. The result is the formation which could be seen as a bird flock or an aircraft navigation instruments.
Any technical goal that engineers and designers face, nature achieved long ago. The artist's work at the intersection of art, technology, and the environmental agenda continues her research in artnetology and focuses on rethinking the relationship between human and non-human actors, relationships within communities, bioethics, and biopolitics.

Migratory Restlessness. Installation view, Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia, 2021