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KAYLAELROD
Failed Escape
Site-Specific Audio/Video Installation
SPEICHERn, Potsdam, Germany
2022
Kayla Elrod




Failed Escape is a recorded performance that remembers the pigeons who resided at the abandoned seed silo located on the outskirts of Potsdam, Germany. The audio was recorded on-site, capturing the disturbing sounds of the pigeons trying to escape through closed windows, bashing themselves repeatedly against the glass. The video illustrates the artist mimicking the birds, running against the window again and again.

I would like to think I could escape, but here I am: stuck in insane repetition.
A force I do not understand holding me here.
The violent smacking plucking my feathers. A nervous pile stacking on the floor.
I cannot find a solution or figure an escape. What is home? I thought it was here.
Beating my senses, contributing to the horrific soundscape made only possible with all the right players. This is a graveyard. Old production. Seeds that feed the birds who used to live here. Now we make art here and told the birds to get lost. Why can’t we let things end? I want it to,
but here I am: stuck in insane repetition.
A force I do not understand holding me here.
The same force that presses two lines between my eyebrows, like my mother’s. The thudding guilt deforming my face into a grimace.
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