This work contains allusions to and descriptions of the death of a child, child abuse, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, hallucinations, and sexual material throughout.

Dirty Birdy is a film work that I made to explore my relationship with grief over the past ten years since the loss of my younger brother. This film work is displayed in a cinema setting, inspired by Cruising cinemas, churches, and graveyards, and includes dirt from my brother’s grave, mixed into the dirt surrounding the audience. The room also pays homage to the writing of Bruce Benderson, “The true Eden where all desires are satisfied is red, not green. It is a blood bath of instincts, a gaping maw of orality, and a basin of gushing bodily fluids.”. The film itself is split into three characters that I feel I have embodied in the past ten years; The Pig (Depravity and Gluttony), The Lamb (Purity, and Obedience), and The Cow (Sacrifice and Motherhood), and within these themes, I explore the many ways through which I have attempted to cope with my brother’s passing.

The visuals throughout the film have been recorded in different locations across the UK, in Manchester, Newcastle, The Isle of Arran, Dublin, and Glasgow, with recordings of clubs, bars, my bed, and carnivorous plants being used for the section of The Pig, recordings of holy sites, the ocean, flowers, sanitised surfaces, and blue skies being used for the section of The Lamb, and recordings of significant places to my family, such as the grave of my brother, and the house where he died, as well as found footage recordings of old family videos for the section of the Cow.

The film also includes a consistent stream of writing in subtitles for the duration of the film, exploring my memories and feelings towards different depraved, pure, and sacrificial activities I have engaged with, and includes quotes from the bible, folk tales  from throughout the UK, as well as roman pederastic poetry by Callimachus and Catallus. The writing also includes pieces of writing from my essays ‘Sobriety, Dog shit, and Gonorrhoea’, ‘Men, Cannibals, and Dancing’, and ‘A Conversation With Mum.’, as well as sections of writing that I recorded during a pilgrimage to visit my brother’s grave for the first time.

The sound work of this film is an original piece composed, performed, and edited by me, including accordion, acoustic guitar played with a cello bow, melodica, church organ, and harmonica, and is inspired by funeral keening and contemporary experimental bagpiping.