SMASH THE CRASH

Frontispace Gallery | Gallery Hours

Mizin Shin + Richard Fadok

Rochester is a major hotspot for birds. Over 300 different species live in this city or migrate through the region every fall and spring, some 1 million birds in total. Nevertheless, tens of thousands of these very same birds will collide into our windows, meeting an untimely end as they attempt, and fail, to navigate our urban landscapes.

This is nowhere truer than here at the University of Rochester’s River Campus, where we estimate that 1000 birds die a year after crashing into Hutchinson Hall, Wilson Commons, and other buildings. Since the early 1980s, members of our own community have had the harrowing experience of seeing these strikes first-hand on the way to class or outside their offices, studios, and labs. Sometimes they encounter birds alive but mortally wounded; at other times, they are already long since deceased.

Smash the Crash asks what it means to live in an era of rampant and oft-unrecognized animal death and dying. Through printmaking, photography, and computer visualization, the artworks gathered here grapple with this question. Made by students, faculty, and staff, they evoke the grief of witnessing bird-window collisions and the fury of living amidst such slow, structural violence. At the same time, they gesture toward the joy of being-with these animals, the obligation to commemorate their former lives, and the possibility of becoming otherwise. Crash Course thus invites reflection on how we might yet find new and more just ways to build, not simply for us, but also for the birds.