BIRDS, WATCHING

BELOW ARE MATERIALS FROM THE MAKING OF BIRDS, WATCHING, A WORK BY CROSS-DISCIPLINARY ARTIST AND WRITER SUZANNE WALSH. SUZANNE WORKS MAINLY WITH WRITING, PERFORMANCE AND AUDIO/MUSIC, ALSO SOMETIMES USING INSTALLATION AND, MOST RECENTLY, PHOTOGRAPHY. HER WORK TESTS THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN WHAT IS CONSIDERED REAL AND NOT, AS WELL AS INVOKING THE NON-HUMAN WORLD AND OUR RELATIONSHIP TO IT. BIRDS, WATCHING BEGAN AS AN ESSAY EXPLORING WALSH’S ACTIVITIES IN BIRD-RESCUE DURING THE PERIOD OF HER FATHER’S DECLINE AND DEATH. THE WORK NOW ENCOMPASSES AN EXPANDED SERIES OF PIECES INCLUDING PHOTOGRAPHY, AUDIO-TEXT AND PERFORMANCE, AND WAS ON SHOW AS PART OF THE WINTER PAGES EXHIBITION AT ENGAGE STUDIOS, GALWAY IN NOVEMBER 2019. THE EXHIBITION EXPLORED THEMES AROUND DEATH, MYSTICISM, IDENTITY AND BELONGING IN DUBLIN. 
In 2018, I began reading these diaries by Derek Jarman, the last ones before his death. They really moved me, in a way nothing had that year, and inspired me to write more honestly about the struggles I was experiencing at the time, as well as my relationship to wildlife rescue. This book brought so many things together for me, ideas around living, dying, community, inner and outside worlds.
"Some birds calls are similar to the human voice". ​I kept a diary of the rescues, thoughts on birds, death, quotes I’d come across.

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My wildlife rescue volunteer work came first, before it became art. Which is why the images are not so considered, often just snapshots. Here I am taking care of a baby robin, which at first needs hand-feeding with a syringe. ​
I have been reading psychoanalytic works in recent years. This book is on being haunted with regard to personal, familial or generational pasts. Experiencing deaths close to you opens you up for profound un-making.  ​
​Also while in Warsaw, I saw this video by young artist Marek Wodzisławski. A small bird is eating his anaesthetised hand. I somehow was drawn to the horror. I mention it in my essay, which refers to consumption, mysticism and death, in connection to birds. 
​One of the photographs from the exhibition. I don’t usually work this way, and these photographs were taken casually on my phone, so the quality is grainy. I think it also lends them a kind of intimacy. Here I am with a young jackdaw I raised, now released to the wild. 
This audio-text work, Oblations, functions as a shadow text made from the original essay.
Video with jackdaw and shadow, titled True Answers of Things to Come, which refers to a particular demon, whose name I won’t mention here. It flickers on the wall, a little like a votive offering.
Reflecting on self-portraits, in particular of humans with animals, birds and me. I was constantly photographing the birds I rescue, putting them on Instagram to raise awareness. I like to let the animal dominate the image. Thinking about this image in Barthes' Camera Lucida.  
An art book I came across on a trip to Warsaw (where I was performing for a literary event), which depicted real-life stories of wild animals in Warsaw, in a way that mixed the fantastical with the social.  ​

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"And the morning began with a bang, that of a young blackbird breaking it's neck on the window. I tried to revive it but it was gone straight away, brown fluid leaking out of its eye, plump body only kept warm by my hands..."
Mirroring a photograph of myself and the jackdaw. 
LISTEN TO SUZANNE IN CONVERSATION WITH ARTIST SARAH VANHEE (BRUSSELS) FOR DRAFF AND DUBLIN DIGITAL RADIO IN OCTOBER 2019.
MORE ON SUZANNE AND HER WORK HERE. 

Published: 5/5/20