Video: Whale as landfill
“After witnessing the humpback smother itself on that Western Australian beach, Rebecca Giggs sought out more information about beaches whales. She writes, “I learned that in the coastal currents some whales become entangled in abandoned fishing kit or ingest trash, bags, mesh; because they are so well insulated by that thick layer of blubber that attract fat soluble toxins as well absorbing heavy chemicals and inorganic compounds found in pesticides, fertilisers and other pollutants that powder the modern sea. The body of the whale is a magnifier for these insidious agrochemicals”, she writes, “because cetaceans live a long time and accrue a toxic load from their prey, levels build up over many seasons making some animals far more polluted than their surrounding environment.” Knowing the whale on the beach is destined for the municipal waste management facility, Giggs says she’s moved to think of the whale as landfill, it was a metaphor, she notes and then it wasn’t.” The same could be said about whale as anthropogenic dump. When we consider the ways in which cetaceans and other fishy beginnings echo though our own flesh, we might pause and reflect on the ways in which we might also echo through them. Whale bodies literally becoming the detritus of late capitalism.”
- Astrida Neimanis quoting Rebecca Giggs
Following Gigg's imagining of the whale as landfill and the concept of the 'Art-Earth' the whale also becomes an art museum. The whale is objectified and becomes a toxic storage space for human waste. The natural animal being reduced to an institution, whether art gallery or landfill, demonstrates the broad-reaching effect our waste has on the environment.