These shoes were found on a loading dock partially submerged in sand on the island of Juist in the North Sea off the coast of Denmark in 1996. Surrounding this pile of shoes were other things submerged in sand, such as gloves, more shoes, cords and bottles.

Walking this beach many times in the coarse of a week I began to wonder why so many single shoes were gathered in one place. Tributes to some god evoked by firelight on the shore at night? castoffs from a boat full of shoes? collections from a weary scavanger who dumped his bag all at once to go for a swim and never found his way back? each shoe worn by the waves and polished with sand had kept its place on the loading dock, but why appearing altogether?

First they were photographed and then picked out of the sand.Shaking off the worst they were bagged and carted back to Germany. It was then time to put these shoeparts into another context as art and installation by dipping them in liquid paper and giving each one a name.

I have selected the names for the shoes from the lists of animals, fish and wildlife disappearing from our planet:

the Orangutang, the Wooly Spider Monkey, the Komodo Dragon, the Oenpelli Python, the Hyacinth Macaw,Gray's Monitor Lizard, the Black Palm Cockatoo, the Plowshare Tortoise, the Shingleback Skirk, the Birdwing Butterfly, the Rusty Blackbird, the Northern Pocket Gopher, the Bobcat, the Monarch Butterfly, the Luna Moth, the Black Swallowtail Caterpillar, the Cabbage Butterfly, the Mourning Cloak Butterfly, the Snowy Egret, the Indigo Bunting, the Black Poll Warbler, the Condor, the Common Tern, the Nighthawk, the Eastern Woodland Caribou, the Freshwater Clam, the Bison, the Chimney Swift, the Song Sparrow, the Yellow Warbler, the Green-tailed Towhee, the Screech Owl, the Boll Weevil, the Dove, the Seagull,the Llama and the Shark, the Salamander the Angora Goat, the Wolverine. The Badger, the Groundhog, the Gray Whale and the Loon. The Horse, the Camel, the Clam and the Sloth. The Zebra, the African Sheep, the Bull of Gnossus and the Lizard. The Buffalo, the Siberian Bear and the Red Dog.The Siamese Elephant, the Great Hare and the Cambodian Elephant. The Inca Jaguar, the Horse of Poseidon and the African Leopard. The Nepalese Tiger,the Bluebird, the African Sheep and the Pacific Lizard. The Borneo Hawk, the Indian Monkey, the Serpent of Dahoney and the White Ox. The Temple Python the African Boa Constrictor and the Wolf.