CETUS, BELLY OF THE WHALE
A year of Ritual
We arrived in Cornwall on Samhain the 31st October 1st November.
The beginning of the dark half of the year.
The day the veils between the worlds are at their thinnest.
On samhain under the full blue moon,
the second full moon of october,
We bobbed for apples.
We plunged our heads into the rock pools to look into the other world.
We were asking for solutions to the plastic problem in the ocean.
A ritual of divination.
We are looking into the otherworld, haunted by ghosts.
Spectres of environmental plundering.
How can we extract them and bind them where they can no longer do harm?
On walking the landscape around Padstow we discovered a blow hole,
A cave that has collapsed into the landscape, eroded by the elements, breathing with the wind and tide.
At the same time the constellation of Cetus, the sea monster or whale was visibly rising in the early evening as we began work weaving.
The landscape at night became the belly of the whale.
A space of transformation where the ‘hero’ is swallowed and washed by the contents of the whale's stomach.
The ‘hero’ is confronted by the problems they face and delves into the subconscious to seek answers.
They emerge reborn to share the knowledge they acquired on their journey.
The symbolic death of the ego, of habits…
a necessary change.
We performed the rituals within the belly of the whale,
The cliffs at night,
Caves,
The blow hole,
The workshop we wove in.
The house that we stayed in.
A mirror to Zeta Ceti, the star nestled in the belly of the constellation Cetus.
We searched for archetypes in the landscape,
seeking the wisdom of giants and pyskies.
Clues pointing to the old ways
and ties to our sensitivity as terrestrial inhabitants.
The spirits lay within the rocks, encased in time, bearing witness to millions of years of the earth’s slow processing.
There is evidence of our impact here,
Sand excavation reveals linear patterns of multicoloured microplastics embedded within the landscape formed over the past 60 years only.
Further there are predictions of how these nano plastics will make their way into our bodies coating our organs, impeding cellular energy exchange.
Chronic fatigue encroaching on society from within, a melancholic mindset numbing our senses to sleep.
This prediction, 60 years into the future, is based on the amount of materials laying in the ocean now as if no more were to be added.
It is time to take action.
With the volunteers we wove a social tapestry,
giving purpose to the processing and extraction of the materials.
The Whale is a monument touched by many hands to the plastic problem and a celebration of the human need to nurture.
By creating form and physicality from the ghost materials we imbue the whale with spirit in the hope that it speaks to those who see it.
Through ritual we become a part of everything,
We are not just the bodies we inhabit and the habits of our day to day lives, we are also the landscape, the water, the cosmos, the organic and inorganic.
Here we call on the ocean and the wind to bring back the materials we discarded back into our hands where we can tenderly work with them to reach stasis.
To begin the reversal of damage.
The solution lies in a societal change whereby our behaviours developed in recent history become kinder to the planet we inhabit, striving for a deeper symbiotic relationship that enriches our experience and alters our disparate relationship with the environment.
We are healing a universally felt absence derived from a detachment with nature,
a symptom of the modern world.
To cleanse and purify ourselves as we cleanse and purify the ocean.
To unknot our patterns of behaviour.
To bind our previous mistakes,
and to merge again with the environment.
To ignite the willing to become custodians of our planet.
Cetus, Belly Of The Whale, a twenty-first century folktale, ongoing...
We arrived in Cornwall on Samhain the 31st October 1st November.
The beginning of the dark half of the year.
The day the veils between the worlds are at their thinnest.
On samhain under the full blue moon,
the second full moon of october,
We bobbed for apples.
We plunged our heads into the rock pools to look into the other world.
We were asking for solutions to the plastic problem in the ocean.
A ritual of divination.
We are looking into the otherworld, haunted by ghosts.
Spectres of environmental plundering.
How can we extract them and bind them where they can no longer do harm?
On walking the landscape around Padstow we discovered a blow hole,
A cave that has collapsed into the landscape, eroded by the elements, breathing with the wind and tide.
At the same time the constellation of Cetus, the sea monster or whale was visibly rising in the early evening as we began work weaving.
The landscape at night became the belly of the whale.
A space of transformation where the ‘hero’ is swallowed and washed by the contents of the whale's stomach.
The ‘hero’ is confronted by the problems they face and delves into the subconscious to seek answers.
They emerge reborn to share the knowledge they acquired on their journey.
The symbolic death of the ego, of habits…
a necessary change.
We performed the rituals within the belly of the whale,
The cliffs at night,
Caves,
The blow hole,
The workshop we wove in.
The house that we stayed in.
A mirror to Zeta Ceti, the star nestled in the belly of the constellation Cetus.
We searched for archetypes in the landscape,
seeking the wisdom of giants and pyskies.
Clues pointing to the old ways
and ties to our sensitivity as terrestrial inhabitants.
The spirits lay within the rocks, encased in time, bearing witness to millions of years of the earth’s slow processing.
There is evidence of our impact here,
Sand excavation reveals linear patterns of multicoloured microplastics embedded within the landscape formed over the past 60 years only.
Further there are predictions of how these nano plastics will make their way into our bodies coating our organs, impeding cellular energy exchange.
Chronic fatigue encroaching on society from within, a melancholic mindset numbing our senses to sleep.
This prediction, 60 years into the future, is based on the amount of materials laying in the ocean now as if no more were to be added.
It is time to take action.
With the volunteers we wove a social tapestry,
giving purpose to the processing and extraction of the materials.
The Whale is a monument touched by many hands to the plastic problem and a celebration of the human need to nurture.
By creating form and physicality from the ghost materials we imbue the whale with spirit in the hope that it speaks to those who see it.
Through ritual we become a part of everything,
We are not just the bodies we inhabit and the habits of our day to day lives, we are also the landscape, the water, the cosmos, the organic and inorganic.
Here we call on the ocean and the wind to bring back the materials we discarded back into our hands where we can tenderly work with them to reach stasis.
To begin the reversal of damage.
The solution lies in a societal change whereby our behaviours developed in recent history become kinder to the planet we inhabit, striving for a deeper symbiotic relationship that enriches our experience and alters our disparate relationship with the environment.
We are healing a universally felt absence derived from a detachment with nature,
a symptom of the modern world.
To cleanse and purify ourselves as we cleanse and purify the ocean.
To unknot our patterns of behaviour.
To bind our previous mistakes,
and to merge again with the environment.
To ignite the willing to become custodians of our planet.
Cetus, Belly Of The Whale, a twenty-first century folktale, ongoing...
Landscape: Padstow, Cornwall. All
Collaborators: Beach Guardian CIC
Funders: Patreon Community
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Collaborators: Beach Guardian CIC
Funders: Patreon Community
