MOBY DICK; or, The Whale

In MOBY DICK; or, The Whale, award-winning filmmaker and visual artist Wu Tsang and the collective Moved by the Motion embark upon a feature-length, silent-film telling of Herman Melville’s great American novel. Presented in its North American premiere at The Shed, the film includes original music composed by Caroline Shaw and Andrew Yee with Asma Maroof, performed live by Members of the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Daniela Candillari.

This adaptation, written by Sophia Al-Maria and directed by Tsang, follows the white whale above and below the surface of the water, developing a visual cosmology that resists the exploration and exploitation of the earth under imperial colonialism. The narrative is interwoven with extracts by the Sub-Sub-Librarian, a character played by 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 C.L.R. James.

The staging of this adaptation by Moved by the Motion pairs the classic story of the whaler’s “floating factory” with the beginnings of the film industry in silent film. The film was shot entirely on a sound-stage combining silent-era filmmaking techniques with a virtual reality game engine projecting surreal ocean environments. Concurrent with the presentation at The Shed, Moved by the Motion will contribute a video installation to the Whitney Biennial 2022 featuring extra-narrative and recontextualized material from MOBY DICK; or, The Whale.

MOBY DICK; or, The Whale is produced by the Schauspielhaus Zürich and co-commissioned by LUMA Foundation, Superblue, TBA21—Academy, HARTWIG ART FOUNDATION, The Shed, DE SINGEL, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.