Maddie Hewitt: The Birder Experience

Friday, September 24, 2021 – Sunday, October 31, 2021
Presented as Part of Future Ecologies

About the Artwork

Maddie Hewitt, The Birder Experience, 2021
Video, 6min 45 sec

The Birder Experience is a video project that observes city dwellers relating to our avian counterparts. The piece captures human curiosity, confusion, and a sense of wonder as people explore the natural world and witness its fleeting moments. Using video footage of birds seen in Philadelphia, a performance of humans imagining themselves as birds along with documentation of humans bird watching, the line distinguishing between human and nonhuman entity is blurred. The work asks: Do we see ourselves in animals or project human traits onto them? How are we connecting to other living beings?

Featured in the film are: Philly Queer Birders, a group for Philadelphia-area queer and LGBTQIA+ folks to meet up and enjoy birding together; a performance of the Avian Choir, an open group of amateur birders who occasionally play bird callers together, filmed for “Moon Viewing Platform,” a project by Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib with Eugene Lew in 2019.

About the Artist

Maddie Hewitt is an artist and facilitator who addresses social issues in their work through abstraction and play. She primarily uses video, performance, installation, and sound to produce projects, often involving research and collaboration. Collectivism, and the interconnectedness of humans and environmental systems drives her investigation. Their work also alludes to the traditional association of women with care-taking of the body, of nature, and of our living spaces.
More Info: maddiehewitt.com / @maddiehewitt