Interview from
Iris Häussler: Divided Heavens

I work as a volunteer for FLAP, which is an acronym for Fatal Light Awareness Program. It was founded over thirty years ago in Toronto by people concerned that birds were colliding with glass in huge numbers. Of course, the problem is worsening as we sit here, right? New high-rises continue to go up. Windows on residential buildings and cottages are getting exchanged for bigger ones day by day. When as a volunteer you patrol the streets at dawn, even to the human eye some of the tall glass-clad buildings appear indistinguishable from the sky. We love this sleek look, yet it’s crazy dangerous for birds. FLAP volunteers collect birds that have fallen. Sometimes they’re injured birds that are brought to the Toronto Wildlife Centre, which specializes in trying to heal them and release them later, if possible. But don’t kid yourself—it’s a very small number that make it and can continue their journey. About four thousand dead birds a year are collected by volunteers in Toronto. We’re only a few and we collect only a small percentage. It’s more like forty to fifty thousand birds that die in the city. You know, Toronto is on a crossing flyway between the Mississippi route and the North Atlantic route, where birds migrate twice a year to get to their breeding grounds in the north and to their winter grounds in the southern US, Mexico, or Central and South America, depending on the species.

For me, the night before going out patrolling triggers a lot of anxiety. I lie awake for hours imagining their flights, what and how they see and navigate the urban and industrial spaces, the perils they face, the joys they might feel. When I find a fallen bird while patrolling, sometimes I close my eyes, and I weigh it in my hand, and I’m reminded that I can open my eyes again and this creature cannot anymore. It can feel unbearable.

At some point I decided I wanted to do something so that this happens less. It was not a big leap to integrate the theme of bird migrations into my artwork. I now see that it had appeared subtly much earlier in my work, but I didn’t fully recognize it as a subject at the time. I was not able to identify it, to give it space. Only now I do. I translate it into fine art.