When I first made this work in April 2021, I wished I could be together with people in a theater. That wish has shifted into a desire to connect in and through absence. Whale Fall II is a study in absence. Entering the gallery at CPR – Center for Performance Research, the viewer is invited into spaces of habitation–a storefront psychic lounge, a handwritten poem, empty garments, an imaginary pop-up library–where the absence of the body speaks louder than its presence.

When the body is absent how do opportunities for connection expand? What imaginaries can I create with you in our collective absence? Perhaps absence makes our hearts yearn for each other more. Perhaps absence is a gift.

But when does absence become dangerous? Can we afford to live in a world without whales or without other species that we have contaminated, or without each other? This project was born out of a desire to sit with grief and rage in a world that discards too much, consumes too much, and pollutes too much. As a result, the bodies of whales and the bodies of Black folk seem to have a kinship in how they have both been targeted and consumed since the transatlantic slave trade. I have also come to learn that some slave ships were later used as whaling vessels.

So, I look to the whale to teach me how to live and die. I look to the whale to teach me how to breathe. I look to the whale to teach me how to sing, listen, echolocate, communicate, take care of my matriarchal families, and enrich the oceans. These lessons have informed the creation of Whale Fall II, which was created in collaboration with Suzi Sadler, cinematographer, Violet Asmara Tafari, production manager, James Kogan, sound designer, Jules Rencher, performer, and the staff at CPR, including Alexandra Rosenberg, Executive Director, Remi Harris, Programs Manager, and Ben Demarest, Production and Facilities Manager.

There are whales of lore and there are whales living in our oceans today. I do not know how they suffer but I do know that they are routinely poisoned, caught in nets, and subject to myriad abuses unbeknownst to the humans that cause their demise. The whale fall is a phenomenon that regenerates the ocean as the whale’s body decomposes and falls to the ocean floor–sometimes over decades–and creates unique ecosystems in the deep sea. Whale fall is the whale’s way of teaching us how to decompose beyond just rotting in graves of excess.

So the question becomes how can my life as a Black artist emulate whales in order to regenerate my own past, present, and future and how does this process replenish the Earth? I invite you to join me.

Whale Fall with me, 
xo
~mayfield brooks