SET SAIL AGAIN exhibition artist | SARA GEVURTZ
The piece, “Woody’s Last Laugh: Gone for All Seasons” is a video project built around the disturbing fact that the iconic cartoon character, “Woody the Woodpecker,” was modeled on the now probably extinct ivory-billed woodpecker found in the Southeast United States. There has been no confirmed sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker since 1944 and it is only by virtue of occasional unconfirmed reported sightings that the species has not been removed from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Endangered Species List as extinct.
In this video, Woody is removed from his 1941 film “Pantry Panic” — made only 3 years before the last undisputed recorded sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker in the wild. The animation is otherwise unaltered. In addition to removing the images of Woody, the soundtrack of the animation is edited to remove Woody’s iconic and very identifiable laugh. Thus, silence is left where Woody would have otherwise had his dialogue, much like the silence in the trees left by the ivory-billed woodpecker’s probable extinction.
Following the 1941 film from which Woody has been removed, the video presents scrolling “end credits” of 21 species removed from the endangered species list due to their extinction, which would have also included the ivory-billed woodpecker but for unconfirmed reported sightings. Whether the ivory-billed woodpecker is now or soon will be extinct, it is not alone in its fate.
Sara Gevurtz is an Assistant Professor of Animation at Auburn University. Gevurtz graduated from the CADRE Laboratory for New Media at San Jose State University where she received a Master of Fine Arts in Digital Media Art. She received her bachelor’s degree in Evolution, Behavior and Ecology Biology from the University of California, San Diego. Due to her interdisciplinary background, her artistic research focuses on ecological and environmental issues. Gevurtz has been published and shown work internationally and nationally, for example at CICA Museum in Korea and the Museum of Copper and Ancient Crafts in Italy. She also works collaboratively to develop a project using a rig and camera, with the goal to create a series of photographs that are both data and art. This project has been presented at such places as ISEA2017 in Manizales, Columbia, Balance Unbalance 2017 in Plymouth UK, and ISEA2018 in Durban, South Africa.
