The Ironic Sublime?
As Belgians have a superb understanding of the workings of irony, the exhibition also includes some absurdly gratuitous moments in our natural history. Some of the choices we have made, individually or collectively, seem whimsical; there are accidents or choices made without awareness of the consequences.
For example, on 17 February 1894, a lonely lighthouse keeper took a European domestic cat as company onto Stephen Island, a unique habitat for a species of wren that, in the absence of natural predators, had forgotten how to fly. Within two years, the wren had become extinct; the culprit was the lighthouse keeper’s pet cat.
And then there is Benjamin, the last remaining Tasmanian tiger (actually a marsupial), who died in captivity in 1936, who froze to death around about midnight on a cold night only because a keeper forgot to open the hatch to his night shelter. There is film footage of Benjamin in his compound included in the exhibition and a reproduction of the compound and shelter.
And how about poor Celia, the last Pyrenean ibex, killed on a nature reserve when a tree fell on her?
One of the most ironic examples of human culture unwittingly juxtaposing itself to nature is the case of Eugene Schiefflen, who released 60 larks into Central Park, New York in 1890 because he wanted all the animals mentioned by Shakespeare to exist in America. Since then, this non-native species has wreaked havoc on biodiversity in the US. Is this the consequence of Juliet persuading Romeo to stay in bed longer by insisting that ‘it is the nightingale not the lark?’
One of the most ironic exhibits is a cinematographic sequence from the film 1492: Conquest of Paradise, in which Gerard Depardieu, as Christopher Columbus, leaps overboard and stalks through the surf to throw himself on the beach of his new found land, accompanied by a corny but triumphant Hollywood soundtrack to enhance the emotions incumbent on this glorious moment in the history of our civilisation; one which was, effectively, the most catastrophic moment in the recent history of the planet, heralding the meeting of two entirely different ecosystems.