A sign placed next to the box requests visitors to:

‘Open the box and follow the instructions’

Inside the box lid the text reads:

• ‘Put on the gloves
• Carefully lift out the bird
• Examine it closely
• Consider its beauty
• Be sad at its demise
• Tell it a secret
• Return it to the box
• Take off the gloves
• Close the lid
• Your secret is safe‘

The work engages with the context of the Freud Museum as a site of display as well as referencing psychoanalytic notions of free association and confidential disclosure. First staged during The Dream of Fluxus as part of Three Star A La Carte at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, the bird* is transformed in this travelling performance by the weight of its secrets while the attendant remains vigilant.

*A redshank. This shoreline wading bird was found on the North East coast and was freeze-dried at a local museum in the exact state in which it was found.