Birds: Flâneurs, Ambassadors and Bricoleurs
Flâneur [French; noun]: one who strolls around aimlessly and pleasantly, observing life, society and surroundings. A flâneur might find great satisfaction in watching birds: their precision and meticulousness, their brilliant chromatic strength, their diversity and their elegance. A bird is a creature of etiquette and protocol. In fact, perhaps birds are flâneurs by nature. They are curious creatures of keen observation, peeping and peeking and tracking, gathering the most minute details of their surroundings – a twig, a seed, a pebble, a leaf, a filament of hair or a tuft of fur – and constructing an entire world of this precious collected minutiae. Their universe exists as a tension between scales: birds traffic in that which is minute and specific and tiny, but they also evoke the bird’s-eye view, the great vista, the distant horizon. Soaring over cities and landscapes, birds observe people and places with a panoramic perspective. The universe of the bird is a study in comfort – nests, eggs, houses, soft down and feathers – contrasted with the experience of transcendence. The vitrines of Hermès Lisbon will celebrate and explore the universe of the birds in Spring 2015.
