Two heads for the pigeons

Two Heads for the Pigeons

Two heads for the pigeons, was (or IS for all that I know) a piece, a work, an effort I took to complete while my stay in a month long residency in the Polymer culture factory in Tallin Estonia. The place itself is an old soviet toy factory, now occupied by various assortments of artist studios and residencies.  The main building was surrounded by other industrial buildings, some abandoned and some transformed into small businesses and the alike. Car repair shops, used part dealerships, some more hipsterish design firm, a biker gang hideout, a nightclub and the usual stuff to see around this kind of environment. All of this spoke directly my aesthetic appreciation for decaying landscape of the industrial era. However cheesy that might sound. The work itself was not designed to be decidedly macabre but rose from other avenues from thought entirely.  

As is customary for my work flow, I had spent two weeks just wandering around, gathering firewood for heating my studio space and bouncing of ideas from other artist inmates of the establishments. I had originally considered some entirely different line of work but having found an entrance to this one particular utterly abandoned hall of what ones was a ceramics factory or some other establishment which had left behind the ruins of brick built furnaces and chimneys. The room must have at some point had more than just one floor as there was no clear plane on which to walk on and the ground elevation at some point rose to several meters.  Literally every spot was covered in old junk either from the original time the place had been in use or something people had just dumped there to get rid of.  One particular spot in the room rose higher than the rest and on top of it was the remains of a brick wall framed by steel bars that held it flimsily together. It faced south where despite of all the dirt on them the wall sized windows filtered the sunlight in, giving the whole scene an unmistakable aura of an altar. There were pigeon droppings everywhere literally by the tons, granting another hint that it had been abandoned for more than a while. 

There it was. A space filled with most of the materials I could ever need and a specific spot on the same space just waiting to be discovered.  All just left for the pigeons that inhabited the space in great numbers.  The altar like setting of the one standing wall on an elevated surface had triggered an ongoing fascination in me for religious and ritual practices around the world. While I’m not a religious man myself I certainly have an appreciation for all manners of human attempts to connect to our environment or to discern the nature of our existence. The theme of burial rites seemed more than appropriate for this dead building and the birds gave the final clue. There has been in use in several cultures in history the practice that has been dubbed sky burial. Most notably the Native Americans and some Buddhist lineages set their dead on high pedestals on elevated ground for the larger birds to feed.  All of this would presumably have had the notion of setting something back into the circulation of nature. So in the end, the idea became something simple as that. 

The actual process of the work took about week and a half. The heads were made out of clay that later was fired at a local ceramics workshop at which I was lucky enough to have some acquaintances working at. The main skeleton of the figures I put together mostly out of waste materials from the room or surrounding areas. After which they were wrapped in cloth, also found there, soaked in plaster, which allowed me to work on some finer detail. The heads were hollow and I had left some cavities in the main bodies for the final touch. Several kilos of birdseeds were bought and the figures were filled with them. There it was. I named it Two heads for the Pigeons, the main effort having been sculpting the heads and the main audience to be were the birds. No opening ceremonies were held for the work to be exhibited. Rather I chose to put up some posters and form an online info group to guide people there. Hoping that in this way the experience would have been more intimate this way. I have not really seen or heard about the piece for a while now and for all I know it’s still there, slowly being buried under rubble and pigeon droppings.