Madness Q & A: The Watery Part of the World

2012/2014

Video, drawings, photographs

Solo Show at The Reading Room, Dallas

The video is a dialogue between whales and humans about madness.

Whales ask questions from philosopher Michel Foucault’s massive tome History of Madness.

On a cruise ship, my family answers the whales’ questions with quotes from Moby Dick.

Melville’s canonical American narrative of mania directed towards the white whale (a stand-in for oil? for happiness? for domination of nature/others?) is juxtaposed with Foucault’s history of madness in relationship to animality, criminality, sickness, the body, power, the unknown, and otherness.

Q: Why, from the old alliance of water and madness, was this ship born, and what made it appear at that very moment?

A: Oh! jolly is the gale, And a joker is the whale, A’ flourishin’ his tail, — Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh! The scud all a flyin’, That’s his flip only foamin’; When he stirs in the spicin’, — Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh! Thunder splits the ships, But he only smacks his lips, A tastin’ of this flip, — Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky- poky lad, is the Ocean, oh!

httpvh://youtu.be/XdWyFShYY4Q

Madness Q & A, video

Thank you to Catwalk Residency and The Reading Room for your support of this project.