Miranda Whall

The tale of Don Quixote acknowledged the ways in which story can move and structure the imagination. When Cervantes wrote his novel in 1605, the age of knightly chivalry had long since past, yet the main protagonist, Don Quixote, still felt compelled to re-enact legendary quests. Viewed by the world as insane, Don Quixote’s pursuits were often rendered useless by common reality. But perhaps what he was really looking to experience was a rite of passage in a Modern age. The medieval stories that had inspired his journeys gave him orientation. Like a song line, they proposed a map of purpose and order on the unknown ahead. Ritualised experiences are rare occurrences in the Western world today, meaning we cross fewer and fewer thresholds of transformation. Whall’s quests identify a historic precedent and a persistently human need to journey in order to come into being. Yet, like Don Quixote, their purpose at first, might appear pointless. What gives the work resonance is the way in which it re-establishes a relationship with myth, ancient ritual, poem, dance and song, creating new identities, new social relationships and re-enchanting us with new modes of imagining as it unfolds. The spectacle of perception, the supposed respectability of a logical-positivist world-view is consequently called into question. What Whall reveals in each of these quests is the world not so much as it should be, but as it already is. A defiant spark of life amongst the desolation.