Whale

Extrapolation

The whale’s innards are large enough to host an entire ecosystem dominated by barnacles, sponges, squid larvae and bizarre coral formations that wreak havoc on the whale’s delicate digestive systems. Italian performance artist Grigio Geppetto (who claims a distant kinship to Paolo Grignotti) once donned a diving-bell suit retrofitted with cave-diving oxygen scrubbers, swam straight into a whale’s mouth and, three days later, squirted out the whale’s nether ends. The performance was intended as a symbolic rebirth that was triggered by a transformative sensory-deprivation experience like the blinding of St. Paul or the hand burning of Paracelus, but it turned out to be more than symbolic. To the dismay of his staid Catholic father, Grigio emerged as Gretta, moved to Brazil, donned gloves, was sexually retrofitted with a vagina and began dressing in pink as she sought out remnants of La Ligue d'Agenda de la Pinque.

See Also

• The Pink Fright

Desiderata