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Rainio & Roberts

To Teach a Bird to Fly, 2020
Single channel, 24′ 21″
Produced by Flatlight Creative House
Courtesy of the artists

Minna Rainio and Mark Roberts’s collaborative work explores socio-political and environmental issues through large-scale installations and short films. They envision alternative visual histories in which the relationship between humans and non-humans is based not on exploitation but on co-habitation and collaboration. The hybrid documentary-fiction film To Teacha Bird to Fly thematises extinction, climate change and our relationship with other species. It presents a fictionalised story told from a future perspective, reflecting on our present moment.The film imagines a post-climate-crisis world in which the environment has reached a relative equilibrium. The protagonist recounts events from the past – stories told by her grandmother, who took care of endangered Northern Βald Ibis birds. She is moved by her grandmother’s dedication to breeding and hand-raising the birds on the brink of extinction and by the profound interspecies connections that formed in the process.

Minna Rainio was born in Kangasala, Finland, and Mark Roberts was born in Canterbury, UK; they live and work in Helsinki, Finland.

Minna Rainio and Mark Roberts are award-winning filmmakers and artists producing films and large-scale moving image installations that deal with topics such as migration and climate change through their impact on people’s individual experiences and histories. Most of their works use the form of documentary fiction to confront the audience and destabilise perceived boundaries and perceptions of time, space, and society.