ED THE DUCK

Dear Ed,

I remember you from childhood. So far as I know we never met, but for a few summer weeks you were on the news every day. Of course, now you’re gone, but you’re not forgotten. 

In 1990, you lived along the Bow River, at Prince’s Island Park in Mohkinstsis (Calgary), a mallard like any other. Only you know how this happened, but you appeared one day with a six-pack ring wrapped around your head. The tragedy of your circumstance wasn’t lost on us humans. The rescue effort took weeks, with you evading all forms of capture while local folk desperately tried to right your situation. Such an irony–all this effort to save a bird that might be shot by hunters later that autumn. Nonetheless, the groundswell of civic concern was touching. Your story brought something hopeful to mind, some other way things could be. Eventually, the rescuers netted you, and the reporter delicately cut off your asphyxiating plastic necklace. A few photos and enigmatic interviews, and then you were released. A prototypical small-town news story came to an end.

But for me, your media episode lingered. It was my first encounter with something that would become all too ubiquitous: the catastrophe of plastic pollution. I’d never thought of such an awful thing happening. What a terrible event to occur in the world. My mum even instituted a family policy because of you. To this day, I cut up every six-pack ring I find. I’ve met numerous other Calgarians who learned to do the same. It’s tilting at windmills, of course. I know that gesture means very little at a macro scale, but it’s also the intention that matters. None of this is inevitable.

A few years ago, you came back into my thoughts. I found the CBC story about the day that you were rescued. It’s an unusual artifact in its own right, charming and unscripted in a way that no broadcast material is today. I paused the video and took screen grabs. There’s some good compositions, and the grainy over-exposed stills are imbued with the particularity of an arid Alberta summer. My freeze-frame process slowed down the images, and recreating them as paintings drew it out ever longer. These impressionistic renderings started to lend to your story an archetypal quality, at least for me. The disappearing flow of time, that drags minor histories toward nothing, gets pulled back slightly from the edge. For now, Ed, your memory might last a little longer.

Kind regards,

Scott

Scott Rogers (he/him) was born in Mohkinstsis Treaty 7 Calgary, Canada, and lives in Glasgow, Scotland. His practice negotiates the complex relationships between humans, other living beings, and land. Recent projects have been developed with Nuit Blanche Toronto (CA), Koraï Project Space (Nicosia, CY), Kunstverein München (DE), and Ivory Tars (Glasgow, SCO). Rogers co-edited “Recognition,”, the 14th issue of the journal FR DAVID, in collaboration with Will Holder and published by KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin, DE).

This article is published in issue 40.3 of BlackFlash magazine. Get this issue