Six Philosophical Monologues for a Seal

Single channel video, 15 minutes and 14 seconds, 2016.

An Australian fur seal swims backwards and forwards in a pool with rendered concrete walls. Through subtitles, the seal speaks, articulating a series of monologues about philosophical and aesthetic topics. A bombastic piece of classical music plays plays over each monologue—a ‘greatest hits’ of the Western musical canon, accompanying the greatest hits of Western philosophy that the seal can’t help but namedrop. Repeatedly, however, before the music reaches its highest point of pathos, both the track and the seal are cut off mid-phrase. The seal then begins again, always commencing with the declaration: “I am a seal”.