Angela Willetts

Fathoming: Among Whales and Walls (2024)

This site-specific multimedia installation speaks to experiences of ecological grief, joy and longing for connection. The project entangles the sublime, watery world and bodies of whales, with the rigid human structure and materials of the jail - materials that separate, contain, occlude, and exhaust.

The installation consists of three video works: one shot at the Santa Cruz dump concrete pile, one shot underwater in Monterey Bay, and one a compilation of whale research footage from the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz. Research conducted under NMFS, ACA, and UCSC IACUC permits granted to Ari Friedlaender.

Some background that informed the development of this installation:

Fathom: Derived from the Anglo-Saxon word faeom, meaning “embracing arms”. A fathom is an anatomical measurement of depth. Approximately six feet, it is the distance of outstretched arms from fingertip to fingertip. 

The town of Davenport is named after the whaler, Captain John Pope Davenport, who set up home a mile from Davenport in 1868. He made his fortune killing whales for their blubber, which he turned into oil. John Davenport founded the Monterey Whaling Company and was an active proponent of law and order, serving as both a justice of the peace in Santa Cruz and as a member of the Monterey Vigilance Committee.

Davenport Jail was built in 1914, using cement from The Santa Cruz Portland Cement Company. The town of Davenport was developed by the cement company to house its factory workers.  Cement is made, in part, from the fossils and shells of long-dead marine creatures (limestone), blasted from the landscape. For every person on Earth, four tons of concrete are produced each year (about twice as much as contained in the cell).