Birds, beauty, and death. Some thoughts about aesthetics in a time of extinction.

Death, they say, is the mother of beauty.  Our capacity for aesthetic appreciation hinges existentially on mortality as a limit.  Without a sense of impermanence, they say, there can be no aesthetic appreciation.  In this light, how do we deal with the death of beauty? This talk is about that kind of aporia: when the appreciation of the beauty of other beings are driving them to death.  In Indonesia, dozens of species of songbirds face extinction because of a widespread appreciation of and love for their song.  Beginning in an attempt to map the aesthetics of this particular extinction, the talk will discuss love and death, loss and its (im)possibility in the Anthropocene, a time of mass extinction.