VIDEO AND PHOTOS. The Centre for Irish Studies and the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art are pleased to invite you to Sara Baume’s multimedia performance The Alphabet of Birds followed by a Q&A with the author and her Czech translator Alice Hyrmanová McElveen.
26 October, 18:30, DOX, Poupětova 1, Prague 7
A lyrical essay by celebrated author and visual artist about the importance of impractical labour and compulsive creativity. A child at Sunday mass and sea swimming; bird alphabets and stone collecting; Goya, Monet and conceptual art; insomnia, parental love and grief, joined in a spellbinding meditation on our obsessions and passions – the multitude of rituals that fill our daily lives with meaning.
Baume’s live performance is accompanied by four short documentaries depicting contemporary artists and a musician at work on land and sea in Ireland.
Writer: Sara Baume
Music: Howlbux – Irene Buckley and Elaine Howley
Featured Artists: Natalia Beylis, Gary Coyle, Laura Fitzgerald, Sara Baume
Film Director: Jamie Goldrick
Artistic Director: Brendan Mac Evilly
Prague Performance Supported by: The ESP-Irish Studies programme of the Government of Ireland and the Centre for Irish Studies, Charles University
Sara Baume is the author of three novels, Spill Simmer Falter Wither (2015, CZ Jasno lepo podstín zhyna, 2016, winner of a Magnesia Litera award), A Line Made by Walking (2017, CZ Vyšlapaná čára, 2018) and Seven Steeples (2022, CZ Sedm věží, 2022). Her first book of non-fiction, Handiwork, appeared in 2020. Sara Baume is the recipient of the Rooney Prize for Literature, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, a Lannan Literary Fellowship and other prestigious literary awards. In 2023 she was named one of Granta magazine’s ‘Best Young British Novelists.’ Her debut solo exhibition, Devotions, Keepsakes and Talismans, took place in the Morley Gallery (London) in 2018. She lives in West Cork, Ireland.
