OPENING LOSS FOR AN HOUR

Museo Novecento, Firenze, September 21, 2025

Opening Loss for an Hour is a listening event and sound work that reflects on extinction, and the unfathomable loss of animals and living beings on the planet due to climate change, deforestation, and habitat destruction.

The sound work uses one of the last recordings of the now extinct Kaua’i ‘ō’ō bird. The original birdsong recording is time-stretched into an hour-long soundscape, opening it into a vast, resonant field. The Kaua’i ‘ō’ō and its entire bird family were declared extinct in 2023 due to habitat loss, disease, and climate change. Only a few recordings remain. Kaua’i ‘ō’ō birds mate for life, and the recordings reveal the last male of the species singing a mating song for a female who will never come.

As a group listening event, Opening Loss for an Hour creates space to sit with this absence, with grief for the loss of species and voices, and with the impact of a human-centered worldview on the planet.

Its first iteration was on September 21, 2025, at Il Giardino Delle Leopoldine, Museo Novecento, invitation by Haley Mellin during her exhibition We Are Nature/Siamo Natura. The living plants in this garden, and the collective effort to care for this new space, reflect another way of being and tending to life. www.museonovecento.it/il-giardino-di-haley-mellin/.