The Logic of the Birds

Sarah Beddington
2015, HD video, colour with sound, 18 min

The Logic of the Birds was inspired by early 20th century photographs of Palestinian processions, showing people moving freely across the land, as well as by a 12th century Sufi poem about a group of birds who go in search of a leader only to realise, after crossing a landscape full of hardships, that collectively they are the leader they were searching for. The project began as a public processional performance with costumed actors in a remote valley close to the Jordan Valley – an area that is on a major trajectory for bird migration as well as being a route inscribed by infinite journeys of pilgrimage, exile and return. By working with a mythological story in the reality of occupied Palestine, the artist hoped to offer one of many possible scenarios in this controlled landscape that might open up a space for a potential future story yet to be created. 

Sarah Beddington is a British artist and filmmaker currently based in London. Her research-based works in film and video, sculpture, performance and public art, explore the overlaps between the historical, the mythical and the everyday, often focusing on journeys and migration, landscape and memory.
She has completed many multi and single-screen film and video works that have been shown internationally in film festivals, museums, non-profit spaces and galleries around the world 
including FIDMarseille; Festival Independiente, Lima, Peru; Nordic Film Festival; San Francisco Film Festival; Mass MoCA, USA; Liverpool Biennale, UK; Drawing Center, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris and Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; Qattan Foundation, Ramallah. She has received a number of awards, nominations and residencies and her work is in many collections including Arts Council England. She is currently in post-production of her first feature documentary that uses birds and bird migration to think about exile and return. This film will be screened at Tate Modern as well as at film festivals.