Before she passed away in December 2023, Esther Salamon described ‘Woodland Bird Woman’ thus: “A multi-media performance which transposes and links a specific memory of a poignant, albeit unusual, activity undertaken by a child with that of an imagined fledgling bird, inextricably linking both activities and individual sensibilities. The activities and the music juxtapose the real with the surreal and aim to provide the audience with an opportunity to consider notions of death, ritual/memory and remembrance. This very personal piece [is designed to] resonate with the experience of young refugees who have lost members of their family in regions of conflict and who experience trauma.”
The origins of the piece lie in the experiences of Esther herself, a child-immigrant to the USA in the mid-1950s. Daughter of Holocaust survivors, she was brought up on stories of death and orphaned children, which she reinterpreted in the light of her late childhood in Detroit. To survive existentially she had to assimilate to the new culture but remained true to her own nature. The ‘unusual activity’ of which she speaks refers to her finding dead birds in the street, placing them in the basket of her bicycle, then taking them back to her mother’s garden for burial. It was an image that never left her, one that grew in her artistic imagination to encompass all the unclaimed dead.
Although she did not live to see the work completed – by her collaborator Robert Laycock and widower David Stephenson – each of the various elements was determined by Esther herself and only in the latter stages were they interpreted by Robert and David.
Completed in May 2025, this is the first full installation of Woodland Bird Woman.
The event includes shorts introductions from collaborators David Stephenson and Robert Laycock, the first screening of the film (running time 20 minutes) plus post-film screening Q&A.
Pay bar is available at event.
