Read the published essay “Utopia for the Golden Frog” by Eben Kirksey
A deadly fungal disease spread in a steady wave across the highlands of Central America in the mid 2000’s, moving about 15 miles a year, driving scores of species to the brink of extinction. As the disease first hit, the imminent threat of mass extinction for amphibians compelled conservationists to collect frogs and keep them in conditions of strict biosecurity. Endangered frogs were saved in a global network of biosecure holding facilities and cryogenic banks called The Amphibian Ark. One frog species kept in this Ark, the Panamanian Golden Frog (Atelopus zeteki), reportedly went extinct in the wild in 2008.
In 1999 the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore was given an import permit granting them ownership over a breeding population of Golden Frogs that had been airlifted out of Panama. As their Golden Frog population grew beyond the capacity of their facilities, they began shipping the frogs around the United States—in plastic Gladware® deli cups lined with damp toilet paper—to other zoos. But the zoological community began to run out of space.
Living within a regime of institutionalized care can be uncomfortable. After working as a volunteer frog caretaker, after conducting participant observation at zoological facilities in the United States, Eben Kirksey crafted a concrete proposal for doing things differently. In collaboration with digital artist Grayson Earle and frog enthusiast Mike Khadavi, who designs custom aquariums, he created an artwork entitled “The Utopia for the Golden Frog of Panama” with the hope of saving a few animals from euthanasia.
Their Golden Frog utopia, a tactical intervention aimed at exposing strategies for managing life within the Amphibian Ark, was pregnant with irony. Living inside a refrigerator, in conditions of incarceration, is certainly not utopic, not even for a frog. So rather than illustrate a fixed vision of how things should be, this project was a “cryopolitical proposal”, aimed at dwelling with the genuine ethical and logistical difficulties that emerge when one grapples with endangered life forms in the early 21st century. This installation an attempt to interpret the interests of another species.
The utopia was housed in an unused refrigerator enhanced with custom digital equipment, an aquarium, and a living ecosystem. Hacking into the refrigerator with a power saw, they put a glass window in the front door. Earle also hacked into the electrical system of the refrigerator, creating a digital thermostat using an Arduino, a small programmable microcontroller, to keep the fridge within 68-73° F daily—the ideal range preferred by Golden Frogs. A species endemic to cool highland climes of Central America, the Golden Frog needed the retrofit refrigerator to survive hot summers in the United States. The Utopia for the Golden Frog was exhibited at Proteus Gowanus in Brooklyn. The fridge was also designed to provide resident frogs with an added layer of protection from the Gowanus Canal, a super-fund site just outside the gallery that was laden with industrial toxins.
Frogs living in sterile tanks, sitting day after day on a damp paper towel, might experience a sense of cosmic loneliness—isolated from other species and companions that make forests livable and lively places. As a partial solution to this problem, Khadavi assembled a miniature ecosystem inside of the refrigerator with useful mosses and vascular plants collected from diverse corners of the globe. These plants were capable of generating enough oxygen to keep a small population of frogs alive. A special composting system was also created inside the tank and seeded with wingless Drosophila melanogaster and flightless Drosophila hydei mutants, which were ordered from an on-line retailer (Ed’s Fly Meat). While they made no pretense of establishing conditions of sterility, conditions that are no more achieved in zoos or Amphibian Ark facilities, they carefully selected other species that are good for frogs to live with in multispecies worlds.
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Grayson Earle: Official Website The Amphibian Ark Amphibian Rescue & Conservation Project of Panama
