Review: 'salt:dispersed by Selina Thompson

Materialising the metaphysical – ‘salt : dispersed’ charts heritage and diaspora  

Croydonites Festival’s first film collaboration with the David Lean Cinema, ‘salt : dispersed’ is a video adaptation of Selina Thompson’s live performance ‘Salt,’ set as a filmed run of the live show. Thompson speaks directly to the camera, deftly switching between narration, poetry and magical realism. Materials make up the supporting cast, prompting us to consider the objectification of bodies on equal terms with the personification of objects: blocks of pink rock salt are dragged, smashed, ground down; an unstained wood chair haunts the stage; undyed fabric drapes Thompson’s frame. The only synthetic material in the piece is a neon-lit triangle, suspended in the background. 

This triangle symbolises the project of ‘Salt’: in 2016, Thompson and collaborator Hayley Reid retraced the Transatlantic Slave Triangle, travelling from the UK to Antwerp, Ghana, Jamaica, Atlanta, South Carolina and back to Europe. The triangle metaphorically becomes a circle: this return to Europe is how Thompson investigates the difficult questions of her own heritage. ‘What is it to turn away from Europe?’ she asks, detailing the discrimination and privilege she and Reid experienced on the journey (racism, sexism, the power of a British passport). ‘Europe pushes against me, I push back,’ Thompson repeats in the scene. This conflict is evident in the language of the show: Thompson speaks in Brummie English, a colonial language enriched by Birmingham’s multicultural communities, embodying the same entanglement between history, displacement and belonging that Thompson navigates in the show’s themes.

The camera is mostly focused on Thompson, with a few close ups on the salt blocks, neon triangle, green fronds and empty chair. We are kept close to Thompson, and so must confront the material head-on – there is no option to avert one’s eyes, to look at the stage in wide-angle as one might in a live performance. In changing from blocks to crystals to granules, salt becomes a visual metaphor for diaspora, as well as for Thompson’s porous navigation between the real and mystical: in one dream-like scene, Thompson describes falling off the cargo ship into the sea and floating among her ancestors.  

Near the end, Thompson grinds a crystal of salt and raises the powdery bowl, asking, ‘What would a site to mourn the enslaved look like?’ The medium of film creates this site – a permanent, digital space where the archive serves as a monument.

‘salt : dispersed’ was screened on 15 October at the David Lean Cinema as part of Croydonites Festival of New Theatre 2025.