Aesthetics of Extinction investigates the complex relationship between aesthetic appreciation and species extinction through the double lens of multispecies anthropology and aesthetic theory. Commonly, extinction processes are associated with the willful killing of species or with the negligent death of other species as a by-product of processes like land transformation – as in the case, for instance, of the decline of the Eurasian skylark (sanglærke), the Willow warbler (løvsanger), and the Northern lapwing (vibe) in Denmark over the last 20 years. Meanwhile, love and aesthetic appreciation for other species, sometimes called biophilia, is usually associated with environmental conservation and care.1
This project will study an understudied extinction dynamic: when humans love other species to death. A range of amphibians, snails, cacti, tropical fish, and birds are driven to extinction because humans keep them as beloved pets or botanical companions.2
Aesthetics of Extinction is the first in-depth study into the ways in which the aesthetic appeal and charisma of certain species by specific groups of humans drive processes of extinction. Focusing on the Indonesian island of Java, the project studies the so-called “Asian Songbird Crisis”, the dramatic decline and potential extinction of dozens of species of songbirds – already under pressure from landscape transformations, habitat loss, and pesticide overuse – because they are being trapped, traded and kept as treasured pets.3
Aesthetics of Extinction addresses the broader issue of multispecies care and nonhuman charisma in environmentalism.4 As the planet hurtles towards a sixth mass extinction,5 it is critical that we explore all types of extinction, and not merely those driven by industrial destruction or carelessness. Our hypothesis is that “non-innocent care”,6 a form of care that is blind to its own violence, is a driver in some species extinction. We understand this “non-innocent care” within a comparative aesthetic and multispecies framework. The framework brings a culturally sensitive study of the aesthetics of nonhuman species into conversation with extinction studies in a novel way to understand the complicity between multispecies love, nonhuman aesthetics, and species decline.
The ecological and market dimensions of the Asian songbird crisis are fairly well understood.7 An estimated 66 million birds are held as captive pets across Java.8 Some 14 million of these birds belong to endemic Southeast Asian songbird species. The Javanese love for endemic songbirds drives a network of trapping and trading that supplies over a hundred species of wild songbirds to Javanese markets.9 As a result, 43 species of songbirds are on the extinction watch-list of the IUCN.10
Still unexplored, however, are the socio-cultural context as well as the Indigenous aesthetics behind the market demand for endemic songbirds. The project will fill this gap by studying the aesthetics charisma of these birds through a multispecies aesthetic and anthropological lens.11 The Asian Songbird Crisis has escalated over the last two decades because of an exploding desire amongst Indonesia’s rapidly growing urban population to own an endemic bird, a trend referred to as “the chirping craze” (kicaumania in Indonesian).12 Kicaumania describes the trend to acquire a songbird and lovingly train it to sing as many motifs of other species as possible. The aesthetic beauty of this multispecies song is judged by a panel of referees in songbird competitions with large prizes. This aesthetics draws on a long cultural history of human-avian relations in Indonesia: the perceived beauty of birdsong builds on a Javanese myth that some birds once were human, and Javanese classical music is full of birdsong metaphors.
Aesthetics of Extinction approaches this “multispecies aesthetics” in a novel, transdisciplinary fashion by combining aesthetic, anthropological, and ethological methods. They include ethnographic participant-observation and aesthetic deep listening to the “multispecies soundscapes” of contests and training; in-depth interviews with and survey of bird owners and competition referees about their aesthetic preferences; recordings using binaural microphones to study the ambient aesthetics of birds and humans; soundscape attribute analysis; in-cage recordings with GoPro for a “bird’s perspective”.13 The methods seek to understand “multispecies aesthetics” as co-created across species in specific cultural and political settings, and open up to the establishment of a novel field: a study across the human and natural sciences of the relationship between aesthetics and extinction on a planetary scale.
