Catalogue > At random

'Killing the Messengers' relates ancient Greek mythology to modern ornithology, exploring birds as omens, and as trackers of climate change, pollution, and habitat loss. We first observe the cosmos through a telescope inside the National Observatory of Athens, before reaching a “bird ringing” table abuzz with scientists and volunteers on the Greek island of Antikythera. Each spring and autumn, the team carries out research on the remote island, where thousands of migratory birds coming from either Europe or Africa rest and refuel before continuing their journeys across the Mediterranean Sea. Like the manteis or “professional diviners” of ancient Greece, who sought omens in birds, these scientists are seeking messages, too.

Bryony Dunne is an Irish visual artist and filmmaker living and working between Wicklow (Ireland) and Athens. Building on her background in documentary photography and visual anthropology, she explores the relations between humanity and nature, the arbitrariness of cultural representation, and the fantasies of human control. She has exhibited her work at venues such as BAHAR – Istanbul’s offsite project of Sharjah Biennial 13, The Mosaic Rooms (London), The Gypsum and Townhouse Gallery (Cairo), the Irish Film Institute (Dublin) and DEPO (Istanbul), and has participated with her films at a number of International film and video festivals such as Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival (Greece), Aesthetica (UK) and Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin. A recent film project, Above the Law, was supported by Screen Ireland and premiered at Cork International Film Festival. In 2020 she was a recipient of a Film Project Award from the Arts Council of Ireland to work on her first feature film entitled Pembe about the death of the last northern white male rhinoceros. In 2021 she was selected to participate at the Jan Van Eyck academy in the Netherlands.