For her 2009 work In Ictu Oculi (“In the Twinkling of an Eye”), artist Greta Alfaro spread a table outside the Spanish village of Fitero and filmed a feast among 40 vultures.

“It was not easy to get them to jump on the table,” she told the Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art. “I had to wait for one week, setting the table every morning and unsetting it at dusk. Vultures have extraordinary eyesight, and if one of them notices that there is food, it will draw circles in the air to let the others know. They approached the scene every day, but either my presence or the presence of the table prevented them from getting closer.”

“I think that it is important today to reflect on the impermanence of almost everything, and on the fact that life cannot be controlled.”