The Whalebone Box
Kotting, Andrew (2020) The Whalebone Box. [Film]
![[thumbnail of A6 KOTTING SMALL BOOKLET.pdf]](https://uca-9.eprints-hosting.org/style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png "A6 KOTTING SMALL BOOKLET.pdf")
A whalebone found washed up on the shore becomes a box. Is it an enigmatic object containing a secret, a survivor from a shipwreck or a magical sculpture with the powers of a Pandora’s Box?
It was given to Iain Sinclair, Kötting’s regular walking companion for his latest jaunt-themed project. They set out on an expedition to take the box back from London to its place of origin, a beach on the Isle of Harris in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides.
Kötting’s disabled daughter Eden, shapes the film, and in many ways, it’s an ode to her indomitable spirit. She provides a voice-over which is subtitled because of her idiosyncratic and limited speech patterns. However, it is as much a demystifying dissection of the filmmaking process where form and content become one.
The Whalebone Box defies logic, story and classification and is all the better for it. Kötting has an intuitive gift for abstracting the mundane to the point of transcendence. And as with much of Kötting’s work, a remixed soundtrack was produced as a double vinyl boxset LP, which included a limited edition booklet, pin-hole photographs and signed posters for the film.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3914-2095
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