Dîdâr: I Am The Feather And The Bird Is The Precipice - Spoken Word Event

Dîdâr: I Am The Feather And The Bird Is The Precipice is a spoken word evening at Summerhall on Thursday 15 October, running from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm in the Lab Gallery. It's built around the exhibition Dîdâr, which runs from 9 to 18 October at the same gallery, and for one night the words that have grown out of it are read aloud in the room with the images.

The exhibition is by Franco-Iranian photographer XEDER, in collaboration with artist Alex Rigg. It's preoccupied with what it calls the life-forms of the precipice: grief, separation, cries and silence, destruction, death and birth, and the ghosts, prophets and crises that inhabit them. Over the course of the show, writers, poets and members of the public were invited to respond to the photographs and to themes of encounter, identity, memory, distance, belonging and connection. Those responses are being gathered into a new publication that accompanies the exhibition, and on the night they're brought to life through live readings in dialogue with the images. The spoken word responses come from writers, poets and members of the public, with contributions from Danna Sim, Topaz Pauls and Suzi Cunningham.

It's one evening in a wider programme around the show. On 17 October, writer, critic and podcaster Bram Gieben leads a facilitated critique, and on 18 October there's a Summerhall Writers Event. There's a content warning for nudity. The spoken word night is free, though it's a ticketed event, so you'll need to book your place in advance. It runs from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm in the Lab Gallery, 1 Summerhall, Edinburgh EH9 1PL.