What Birds Say

Elfi Seidel with Edition Taube

Book Launch ⎢ Thurs. June 25, 18 - 21 hr

einBuch.haus / Lindenstr. 91, 10969 Berlin 

What Birds Say assembles attempts to mimic bird songs in writing across 64 languages, compiled from dialogues with different native speakers. Side by side, these abstract word sequences from around the world unfold a poetry of their own – clumsy and charming at once, saying less about birds than about our longing to grasp the world in language. A dadaistic chorus of onomatopoeia that may connect us all to singing birds.

Elfi Seidel

Elfi Seidel is a visual artist. Central to her work are the shifting materialities and meanings of language. In editions, artists' books and site-specific works engaging spoken and written language, she explores the peculiar beauty that phrases, words and signs may unfold beyond semantic clarity and communicative function. She is interested in creating openness in reading and listening, in spaces of poetic ambiguity and in highlighting the mystical within the linguistically familiar.

Elfi Seidel
@elfi_seidel

Edition Taube

Edition Taube is an independent publishing house for contemporary art and publishes artists’ books and editions in small print runs. Edition Taube was founded in 2009 by Jonas Beuchert, Tilman Schlevogt and Jan Steinbach and received the German Publishing Award in 2020, 2022 (Grand Prix) and 2025.
Edition Taube believes in the future and demands and supports new positions on paper. Researching and conveying the subversive power of the naive and intuitive is not only expressed in the production of books and editions, but is as well a motivation for bringing new artistic perspectives into circulation.
Through an active exchange with artists and like-minded people, an international network has developed since 2009 and enables exhibitions, workshops and collaborations in the world’s metropolises. The cultural exchange and the dialogue with artists and recipients are central.

Edition Taube
@editiontaube