Hamletsgade 6
2200 Copenhagen N
Denmark
DOVECOTE
Sophia Luna Portra
20.08.26 - 13.09.26
DOVECOTE by Sophia Luna Portra
what must not be forgotten
messenger pigeons will carry forth in spite
The medieval European dovecote was a crux where the infrastructure of class, nature, agriculture, warfare, and communication melted into an architectural form.
Dovecotes were structures where doves were kept, free to roam but trained to return.
Only gentry had the droit de colombier, the right to keep doves, as it guaranteed an extra ressource of meat as well as dung, raised on the grain of the fields of the neighbouring peasants. For this reason dovecotes were a symbol of dominion and placed visibly on grand estates, and for this reasons many dovecotes were demolished during the French Revolution as a symbol of inequality and servitude.
Homing pigeons have been used for communication, resistance and espionage from ancient times till WW2.
The common dove of the streets are the offspring of dovecotes.
Martha was the last of her species, The Passenger Pigeon of North America. Once able to turn the day to night when flying overhead, and counting in the billions, the Passenger Pigeon was extinct within a hundred years of the invention of the telegraph- sightings could be communicated long distance, and so the great flock was easily hunted. Martha died in 1914, four years after her last companion.
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