“What is suffering? I’m not sure what it is, but I know that suffering is the name we give to the origin of all the sighs, screams, and groans — small and large, crude and multifaceted — that concern us. The word defines our gaze even more than what we are looking at.” –Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
BOB TAKES A NAP is a part of a work-in-progress about the inhabitants of the Farm Sanctuary, an organization that rescues animals, when possible, from the abuse of factory farms. We met Bob during a visit to the Farm Sanctuary site in Watkins Glen, New York, where he charmed us by asking for belly scratches and by grunting while we disrupted his nap with our camera. This particular video is inspired by Farm Sanctuary’s Someone, Not Something campaign. BOB TAKES A NAP débuted at Syracuse Warehouse Gallery’s street-facing exhibition space, where he met the gaze of pedestrians walking by. Like all our work, this video project attempts to bring into perception conditions of modern life that are normally, and often purposefully, invisible.