Rachel's Orphan

An unedited live performance of Rachel's Orphan. A sound and image collaboration by artist Angela Cockayne and Composer Nick Atkinson. Violin Lorna Osbon editor Robert Fearns Ishmael Jackson Fearns.

Call me Ishmael is perhaps one of the best known opening sentences of any novel, Rachel's Orphan from the last line of the same book Moby-Dick is a haunting performance in which the teeth from a whales jaw are removed by a white hunter only to be replaced by a dentist. Ishmael the orphan, narrator and only survivor of this classic tale, wait for rescue from the whale ship Rachel on a coffin lid. Themes of provenance, dominion and repatriation conclude with nosuicidespermittedhere painted on the flank of the white whale.