Whale Song
London Design Festival, V&A Museum, 2022
Project Team:
Rania Ghosn + El Hadi Jazairy
Monica Hutton, Anhong Li
David Rothenberg (Music, “The Killer”, 2008), Beatrice Galilee (Narrator)
Venue:
V&A Museum, London
On view:
September 17–25, 2022
Curator:
Meneesha Kellay
Whale Song is a DESIGN EARTH fable that casts the skeleton of Hope, the stranded blue whale, as it is assembled in the Natural History Museum in London. Hope replaced Dippy the Diplodocus, who had replaced George the African elephant: a line of mascots burdened to keep the museum relevant. The fable follows the whale's bones as they are disarticulated, mixed with polymer replicas and carbon-fibre joints, and strung up to iron trusses with steel cables, and traces the museum back to the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, which financed the purchase of its land. Revolted by the symbol she was cast to become, Hope takes a great fall in a demand for climate action. Landing on Dippy, the bones break apart and are rebuilt, as inaccurately as the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, into a multi-species skeleton that swallows the Crystal Palace and serves a final meal to the museum's fossil-fuel benefactors. Water floods, the museum gates open, and Hope breaks free.
Click for more information about the Whale Song project.