In collaboration with visual artist Miriam Sentler (DE/NL).

Cairban: A Contemporary Shark Hunt is based on a three-day wildlife tour on the Atlantic Ocean during the summer of 2021, followed by a month-long residency at KNOCKvologan. The tour was actually a search for the basking shark, the world’s second largest fish, which swims open-mouthed through Hebridean waters filtering out plankton, its main food source, during the summer. The sharks were once subject to a fierce hunt for their large, oil-producing livers. Cairban—the Scots name for the basking shark—showcases a contemporary endeavour to find, “hunt”, and “shoot” a shark, only with a camera instead of a harpoon. Incorporating scientific research about the travel routes of plankton, witness reports, sea maps, and GPS tracking, Cairban comments on modern-day technologies used in wildlife spotting, now a practice fuelling the tourism sector of the Scottish Hebrides. In the reading, we reflect upon the methodological challenges of following such an elusive “object”, how climate change might be impacting the shark’s behaviour, and notions of absence/presence.  

The performance, which consists of the reading of a travelogue in the middle of a “shark wheel”, is accompanied by the launch of a new artist publication. The newspaper The Cairban Gazette showcases different historical representations of the basking shark, spanning from the 18th century until the present day. The front page features the news about the crew's own non-encounter, letting the shark “off the hook” after centuries of being captured in newspaper headlines, as well as physically captured by hunters. The fact that the shark never appeared during what was said to be peak season was later contextualised in a blog post by Basking Shark Scotland. They called it the “strange summer.”

Format: Performance (0h20m), floor vinyl prints (150 x 80 cm), dibond print (150 x 100 cm), 5 newspaper hooks with artist publications (432 x 279 mm, 30 pages)

This work was developed during residencies at KNOCKvologan (Isle of Mull, Inner Hebrides, Scotland) and was presented during 2022’s METEOR Festival Bergen (NO), Archive Event VI: The Chase at Looiersgracht 60 Amsterdam (NL), and during a special performance at the Whale Hall of the University of Bergen Museum (NO) in 2023.

With thanks to Miek Zwamborn and Rutger Emmelkamp, Kari Furre, Dr. Clive Fox (Scottish Association for Marine Science), Basking Shark Scotland, Coastal Connections, Toril Johann, Åshild Sunde Feyling Thorsen, Aisha Marie Heim, and UiB Museet.

Image credit: Miriam Sentler / LNDW Studio