devynn emory’s deadbird is part one of #mymannykin friends, a 3-year mixed media performance trilogy holding the complexities of death and dying.
A mannequin plays multiple characters, telling stories of near death experiences, pre-death visualizations, and transitions into the afterworld. emory bases these stories in their own threshold-walking, deep research and personal experience as a critical care hospice nurse, a healer, a transgender person bearing witness to high rates of suicidality in the community, and their daily navigation through the world as a mixed-race indigenous person.
Writes emory, “This work holds stories of near death experiences as a way to engage audience in conversation about illness and the dying process before a moment of crisis, and to weave in my daily connections with other planes of existence in the spirit world.”
