THE LEVIATHAN'S PLAYING
There go the ships: there is that Leviathan,
whom thou hast made to play therein.
Psalms 104
In February 2017, the Stultifera Navis Institutom made its first expedition to the center of the Baja California peninsula with a specific purpose: to read poetry to the whales. The site chosen was the one where the largest recorded slaughter of this creature ever took place.
To the surprise of the crew, the cetaceans were great fans of human poetry. This was confirmed in successive expeditions. Based on this experience a continuous frontier research process was consolidated, which, parting on the exhaustive study of the environment, the natural history of gray whales, and different ethnobiological sources, seeks to articulate the interactions of said species of cetacean with human cultural activities through a proposal of symbolic ecology.
The project has hosted tens of artistic creators in residence, as well as carried out research in the line of citizen science and Art-Science projects.