DECOYS – MIND THE PARK
Andrea von Lüdinghausen makes the animal, especially the crow, the subject of her artistic interventions for her site-specific work "Lockbilder" (decoys). In doing so, she follows an art tradition that has always given animals a prominent place in her works, from the oldest evidence in cave paintings to subversive strategies in modern times. It is a long way from Albrecht Dürer’s depiction of the hare as a contemplative motif of a harmoniously ordered nature to the dead hare in Joseph Beuys' famous action as the disturbing representative of an audience that has become insensitive to the messages of art. He leads through a dialectical understanding of the animal, which symbolically stands for a friendly, peaceful and nurturing as well as a hostile, sinister and domesticated nature. The ancient myth sees man between animal and God. The triadic structure, in which the human being has an equal share in the sensual and instinctive as well as in the spiritual and spiritual, determines the image of the human being up to modern times. For the modern theory of evolution, man is part of a long line of development that leads from the Ice Age animal and plant world to man. Relationships between animals and humans has u. a. discovered behavioral biology. She found out that higher developed animals communicate with each other with the help of certain behavioral patterns and sign systems. And that some animal species are at least partially capable of abstract thinking. Self-awareness as recognizing oneself in the mirror has been demonstrated in chimpanzees and magpies.
The artist Andrea von Lüdinghausen is fascinated by this communicative potential, which can
be as clairvoyant as it is blind. As part of her artistic investigations, she points out how hunters use the perceptual structures of animals to lure them into traps. They operate with simulations that fit into the animal stimulus-response scheme. For example, with the help of "Predator Enticers", predator magnets from Wisconsin, they set up deceptive lures. As soon as their artfully arranged plumes shake violently in the open field, they attract crows or foxes, who believe that a bird is about to be torn by an attacker. Von Lüdinghausen discovered the devices from a hunting outfitter on the Internet, along with their not only communicative but also sculptural qualities.
As a sculptural ready-made, they stand in the “Mind The Park” exhibition as an example of a perfect deception machine. This aspect is also emphasized by the base designed by the artist for the object “Predator Magnets” (2009), which she has covered with a canvas whose camouflage pattern opens a new chapter in the history of deception. Photorealistic naturalism bears only a vague resemblance to the primitive camouflage painting of earlier times. The sophisticated deceptions that humans devise in order to take advantage of the communicative abilities of animals are a reminder of how fragile successful human communication is if it does not follow the conditions described by Jürgen Habermas - as counterfactual - Sincerity.
Andrea von Lüdinghausen's artistic intervention "Reframing", installed in the stairwell of the municipal exhibition hall "Kubus", takes on the black stickers that are on the large window panes there. They show silhouettes of birds of prey that are intended to prevent birds from flying to their deaths against the panes. Without success, as testified by repeated accidents. These accidents continue to fascinate people. They photograph the imprint the bird leaves on the windows and post it on the Internet as a visible sign of death. As part of her work, with the consent of the authors, von Lüdinghausen has collected many of these terribly beautiful photographs in a book. In her intervention on the glass panes of the cube, she doubles the silhouettes of the birds installed as a warning, creating strange, exotic-looking hybrids.
They are more than once reminiscent of the "beast with two heads", as Shakespeare called lovers. "Lie and die", the most used rhyme in "Romeo and Juliet", Eros and Thanatos move close together. Above all, however, they make it clear that the deception devised by humans for communication does not work here to the detriment of the birds.
On the other hand, the consequences of the installation with different numbers of flocked decoy crows, which Andrea von Lüdinghausen had placed on six street lights outside, are quite different. Contrary to the advice of the crow-hunting professionals, the bird dummies were arranged as three-dimensional ornaments at a height of 10 m. While the decoy designed by the hunter to be as natural as possible usually deceives the predators, the artefact completely fails to have an effect on the city birds, despite its velvety black plumage. On the other hand, it clearly misleads the passer-by's indifferently wandering gaze.
Michael Stoeber, Catalogue Text for the publication MIND THE PARK, Fruehwerk Verlag, Hildesheim, 2019