Vogelconcerten (Bird Concerts) refers to a series of 17th-century paintings depicting gatherings of birds encircling the stump of a dying tree, often conducted by an owl. Originating in present-day Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, these works were traditionally read as allegories of knowledge and harmony. Yet, when approached through an ecofeminist lens, they take on much more ambiguous and layered meanings.
Many of the birds depicted are neither songbirds nor species that would naturally gather. Several are exotic birds, brought to Europe through early colonial trade, revealing deep entanglements between natural history, colonial extraction, and visual culture. Their improbable assemblies and fantastical details subtly undermine fixed ideas of natural order, reason, and harmony.
These bird gatherings also echo Aesop’s fable — written by Aesop, an enslaved man in ancient Greece — in which an owl warns other animals of human danger. Seen from this angle, Vogelconcerten can be read as early visualizations of mourning practices in response to ecological grief, and as spaces of storytelling within fragile ecosystems — in sharp contrast to their original function as bourgeois affirmations of natural order and dominance.
My intention is to approach these works transhistorically, asking how they might speak to us today, especially through the lens of eco-mourning and ecological grief. Rather than treating them solely as historical artifacts, I consider them active witnesses to lost or endangered worlds, and as portals through which to reflect on urgent contemporary issues such as biodiversity loss, colonial legacies, and the relationship between humans and more-than-human life. Through new forms of storytelling — including textual, sonic, and performative interventions — I aim to reactivate Vogelconcerten as images that invite collective remembrance, mourning, and resistance.
