Mo Ganji: Spoon-billed Sandpiper | Löffelstrandläufer | Calidris pygmaea | No. 210/250 from work group 8/99

Mo Ganji turns toward the spoon-billed sandpiper — a small migratory shorebird breeding in the Arctic and wintering along Asian coastlines — by letting the single line move toward inner coherence rather than adaptation or anomaly. The line condenses the being into a reduced presence, setting aside beak shape, movement and fragility so that what emerges is not a description, but a core. In Ganji’s thinking, the line does not belong exclusively to this bird; it remains open, reminding us that every form is also a human concept, temporarily named.

Calidris pygmaea is listed as Critically Endangered (CR) on the IUCN Red List. The species has undergone an extreme and rapid population decline, with fewer than a thousand individuals believed to remain. It breeds in a very limited area of northeastern Russia and depends on a chain of coastal stopover sites across East and Southeast Asia during migration.

The principal threats include large-scale loss of intertidal mudflats, particularly in the Yellow Sea region, driven by coastal development and land reclamation. Additional pressures include hunting along migration routes and low breeding success. Because the species relies on precise timing and intact stopover habitats, disruption at any point along its migratory path has disproportionate consequences.

Ganji’s single line opens a space in which the sandpiper can be encountered beyond specialization or rarity. It allows the being to be perceived as part of a long, fragile passage between distant places, suggesting how lives dependent on continuity across borders are among the first to falter when the spaces in between are erased.