Sitting Feeding Sleeping (2013)
By Rachel Rose
Synopsis: I shot Sitting Feeding Sleeping in a cryogenics lab, where nitrogen-pumped bodies circulate their own blood. In a robotics perception lab, where machines read human emotion. And in zoos, where animals live extended lives emptied of sexual, social, survival cues. I used these three spaces as prosthetics for understanding deathfullness — being alive, feeling dead. Ruba Katrib: Sitting, Feeding, Sleeping takes us on a very particular journey through contemporary constructions created around different life forms, from medical breakthroughs to basic scientific facts to animal care within zoos. What was your research process for this work, and how did you decide on the connections between the information and images? The video remains fairly abstract, although still full of content. Rachel Rose: When the project began, I was doing two things at once and it wasn’t clear to me why I was doing either. I was researching the way different cultures determine when a body is dead, and I was taking aimless, wandering visits to zoos. Looking back, I can see this as my way of not being alone with what I was feeling — which was a kind of numbness. The research went unexpectedly, and I…
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