On August 7, 2016, a juvenile humpback whale died on the beach just south of Fauntleroy Ferry Terminal in West Seattle. This animal was one of hundreds of marine mammals that strand every year on the northwest coast of the Pacific. These ocean-dwelling animals are mostly hidden from humans during their lifetimes, but in a stranding death, they reveal themselves to us, and call on us to care. This care can take many forms—from traditional ceremony, to scientific necropsy, to community vigil. Join Henry representative and Learning Endings collaborators for a forest and shoreline walk of storytelling, conversation, participation, and performance as we collectively consider what the death of the Fauntleroy humpback can teach us about the lives of these animals, those who care for them, and the entangled futures of humans and oceans.
DETAILS & DIRECTIONS
We will convene at the northernmost parking lot off of Fauntleroy Way SW, next to the park entrance sign at 9:30 AM. From there, the Learning Endings collaborators will lead the group through the park, stopping at predetermined points for conversation and activities. The route, with stops, should take about three hours to complete. Food and drink will be provided to participants at the final stop.
ACCESSIBILITY
Care for the Stranded is part of Learning Endings, a multi-part project by artists and researchers Patty Chang, Astrida Neimanis, and Aleksija Neimanis. Through a series of events, gatherings, research, and discussions, Learning Endings brings together local communities, scientists, artists, and humanities researchers to consider ecologies of care in a time of endings, with a focus on stranded marine mammals.
LEARNING ENDINGS COLLABORATORS
Patty Chang is a Los Angeles based artist and educator who uses performance, video, installation and narrative forms when considering identity, gender, transnationalism, colonial legacies, the environment, large-scale infrastructural projects and impacted subjectivities. She teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA.
Astrida Neimanis is a feminist cultural theorist. Her research focuses on human-water relationships, and climate catastrophe as a symptom of corrupted social and cultural relations. She is currently Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Feminist Environmental Humanities at UBC Okanagan, on the unceded lands of the syilx okanagan people. Her most recent book is Bodies of Water (2017).
Aleksija Neimanis is a veterinary pathologist and researcher who works with wildlife health and disease surveillance at the National Veterinary Institute (SVA), Sweden. She frames wildlife health findings within a One Health context, in which human, animal and ecosystem health are all connected, to help inform policy.