SPOTLIGHT
SO LONG, FAREWELL:
Extinction in the Anthropocene Era
Artist Statement
So Long, Farewell Installation View (2015).
All images courtesy of the artist.
So Long, Farewell: Extinction in the Anthropocene Era is a memory card game featuring animals
from North and South America labeled as extinct in the wild or critically endangered by the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as of December 2014. In the
game, cards are placed face down and players try to find matched pairs by turning over two at
a time, remembering their location and name. Focusing on mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and
amphibians, the game has 320 species and 640 cards total. So Long, Farewell is unwieldy and virtually unplayable without deep concentration and focus—something desperately needed now
to stave off calamity. Using this traditional children’s game underscores the fragility and overwhelming devastation of the mass extinction we are approaching (and causing). Furthermore,
several of these species are already forgotten or barely known; through careful research, my illustrations are based on color photographs, fragmentary descriptions, and in several instances,
a note stating their coloration in life unknown. In a way, So Long, Farewell serves as a memorial
to these vanishing animals. The act of playing the game shows the enormous task at hand to
prevent these mass extinctions, potentially including our own.
- Daisy Patton
www.daisypatton.com
14
SciArt in America April 2015