The project explores the colloquial connection between birds and psychiatric hospitals. Referencing the history of behaviorism, the project takes shape of the Skinner operant conditioning box* as a symbol of the dark age of psychiatry. In Skinner’s experiments, behavior was assumed to be a mere function of external stimuli without regard to the subjects’ will or agency. He famously conditioned pigeons to play ping-pong or develop superstitious behaviors —implying that with the appropriate stimuli and reinforcements, any human could be reprogrammed to attain desired behaviors. We designed a birdhouse in the shape of a Skinner box for pigeons. It is, however, not the birds that are conditioned. Rather, the birds condition their human feeders by triggering a visible signal when the birdhouse runs out of food.
* Note: A Skinner-Box is an extremely low-stimulus cage for a test animal, in which it can learn new behavior in a standardized and largely automated manner. Proponents of behaviorism believe that the behavior of an animal can be completely influenced by rewarding desired behavior, that is, through operant conditioning. Named after the Amrican psychologist and behaviorist Burrhus Frederic Skinner, a Skinner box chamber typically consists of an empty, smooth-walled birdcage with a small picking disc and a feed chute. The picking disks are connected to a device that registers the picking behavior (frequency and duration) on the disk.
Co-authored with Dietmar Offenhuber, within a sculpture park by Claudia Märzendorfer
Concept and artistic direction: Azra Akšamija and Dietmar Offenhuber
Prototypung and fabrication: Natalie Bellefleur
Public art installation, birdhouse
The project was produced within the project For the Birds / Pour les oiseaux, a collective aeronautic sculpture garden displayed on the premises of the Landesklinikum Hollabrunn in 2019, commissioned by the Art in Public Space department of Lower Austria government and the socio-psychiatric department of the clinic Hollabrunn. For the Birds is a public space art project by Claudia Märzendorfer, produced with the support of Jeanette Pacher and Katrina Petter (KÖR Niederösterreich), including contributions by many international artists.
Materials: Sheet metal panels, Plexiglas, threaded rods, screws, nuts
Dimensions: 36 x 30 x 30 cm