Christine Baeumler: Lost Menagerie

Believe it or not, there is an effort underway to make the human race extinct. The Volunteer Human Extinction Movement thinks it's high time human beings quit breeding, die out, and relinquish the earth to the animals and plants we're making extinct to the order of 50,000 species each year. For obvious reasons this is unnatural; species are hardwired to procreate. So while some people are whiling away their time actively considering self-extinction, most other animals are concerned with the more basic desire to simply survive. After visiting Charles Darwin's home in England, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and the Galapagos Islands, local artist Christine Baeumler had all the inspiration she needed to create art focusing on species extinction. She put together "Lost Menagerie"'s two video installations, Darwin's Table and Surfacing, to explore our roles in eliminating species from the planet. Darwin's Table mimics Darwin's experiments and the development of his evolution theory with a soundtrack created by altering sound recordings Baeumler took in the field. Surfacing studies a pod of acrobatic spinner dolphins near the Great Barrier Reef. "Lost Menagerie" also includes a series of paintings Baeumler made of aquatic animals and their evolutionary process. The exhibit closes on Saturday, so you'd better go see it before it becomes extinct.
June 5-28, 2008