When a whale dies in open waters and there is no wind or current to carry the body inland, it eventually falls. Maybe through injury or age its muscles finally fatigue. The endless chore of breathing the sky becomes impossible, and the length of Its rhythmic body stills in the mounting swells. With one last exhalation its great mass begins to sink.
At 1000 meters down sunlight is just a memory, but it’s still 9 more hours before our whale settles to the bottom, unraveling the bulk of itself across the ocean floor. A cloud of silt rises at the meeting of the two, and a new but fleeting ecosystem is born. It’s a macabre tableau, set down for crabs and worms and swimming things to feast on. It has become ambrosia in a desert. A territory to be staked out between gray meat and pale bones.
A slow procession of chiton marches in from the dark. Banners of fish dance like pale ribbons above the creeping mud where blind worms crawl searching. They all arrive with clacking armor and yawning mouths, performing a pantomime of ancient feudalism. With waves of skittering legs they stake claims on this gully and that ridge, drawing a quilt of borders across the length of their new mana. They decide our whale is theirs now, fit for generations to come.
Time passes, and the whale is owned ten generations on. Its arrival in the deep is a myth, divided up among kin who still bicker. Piece by piece, it’s been parceled out. With every bite a deficit is paid into the future. There’s a decision on the horizon where home meets hunger, and the clarion call to move on is near. It’s a simple choice for those things without lungs to make, but a tomb for those who still breathe.
This work reflects on the inheritance of built environments and collective myths. It asks what happens when old paradigms begin to shift? When the names and symbols we once trusted no longer align with the world we now see.
Leviathan is not a monster but a mechanism. An unfolding map drawn by hands no longer here. A system built to endure, yet fraying at the edges. This piece invites viewers to consider what we carry forward, what we leave behind, and what new forms might emerge in the space between.
