EN /
ESOn the occasion of the
public program related to the exhibition
Of Whales, by Wu tsang, the film
MOBY DICK; or, The Whale will be screened in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza's Auditorium. A feature-length silent-film telling of Herman Melville’s great American novel
Moby-Dick (1851). This adaptation, written by Sophia Al-Maria and directed by Tsang, is interwoven with “Extracts” by the Sub-Sub-Librarian, a character played by poet Fred Moten, and tackles the novel’s subterranean currents, encountering the resistance of the ship’s hydrarchy, or organizational structure, and collectives of “mariners, renegades, and castaways,” as described by historian CLR James.
The film was originally conceived by Wu Tsang to be accompanied by a live orchestra. Produced by
Schauspielhaus Zürich and
Moved by the Motion, TBA21–Academy co-commissioned this work with LUMA Foundation, Superblue, Hartwig Art Foundation, The Shed, DE SINGEL and The Whitney Museum of American Art.
The
original version will be presented on February 20 and 21 at the Teatro Fernando de Rojas of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, with live music performed by Orquesta Clásica Santa Cecilia and with the support of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Madrid.
The
film version can be seen from February to June, in several showings on Tuesdays and Saturdays in Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza's Auditorium.