"Evil Is Always Human" The body of the whale in modern audio-visual culture Around Sound II
Jessica Sarah Rinland, Jose Luis Espejo
2nd October | 16:30 - 18:00 h
Free admission while seating is available | Registration form at the end of this page
The common story of whales and people is one of the most popular of the 20th century. It is a story associated with death and predation. Curiously, between the lines of that story, there is an unsuspected and accurate account of human vision and listening as well as the role of these two senses in modern history. Evil Is Always Human is a project underway from Jose Luís Espejo that tells of the role that the body of the whale has had in the development of current capitalism through the analysis of the images and sounds that humans have created or captured from these marine mammals.
The whale is also a recurring subject in Jessica Sarah Rinland's filmography in which it appears as a starting point that allows her to deal with issues related to ecology, history, the representation of animals in the cinema, the environment or cultural changes. Two examples of this approach are the works The Blind Labourer, in which she examines the similarities between the whaling industry and the lumber industry, or the film installation constantly changing, We Account The Whale Immortal filmed in collaboration with the author Philip Hoare (Leviathan or, The Whale) and different museums.
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Jessica Sarah Rinland
Artist and filmmaker, Jessica Sarah Rinland has held international exhibitions in galleries, cinemas, film festivals and universities, including the NYFF, LFF, Rotterdam, Oberhausen, Edinburgh and Mar del Plata. She received grants from the Arts Council England, Wellcome Trust among other institutions. Her Artist-in-Residence includes: MacDowell Colony, Kingston University, Locarno Academy and Berlinale Talents. In 2016, she exhibited We Account The Whale Immortal using an installation equipped with multiple, randomised screens at Somerset House, London. She is currently the Associate Artist at Somerset House Studios, and Film Studies Center Fellow at Harvard University.
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Jose Luis Espejo
José Luis Espejo organises events and exhibitions, researches and teaches classes. He studied Art History in Madrid, Buenos Aires and Oxford and in recent years has been focusing his research on the relationship between art and the culture of listening. He participated in self-managed projects such as Mediateletipos and Ursonate Fanzine. In 2017, he co-curated along with Andrea Zarza CHARIVARIA, on how people position themselves in the public space using sound. He organised a series of concerts performed by Archipiélago and Resonancia at the Reina Sofía Museum and Arrecife at CentroCentro. In 2016, he co-curated the five site-specific installations in public spaces that were part of Entzumen Behatokia/Listening Observatory within the framework of the European Capital of Culture Donostia-San Sebastián. He publishes his research on either radio capsules or in texts, for example, such as Cárcel de oro and Richard Hamilton on Radio Reina Sofía or Una utopía más que apetecible in MASE 2015 and Políticas de un espacio aural, at ARTe SONoro, La Casa Encendida. He is a music consultant at the Reina Sofía Museum and coordinates the Theory and History module in the Music Industry and Sound Studies Master’s programme at the Carlos III University in Madrid.