Elisa Giardina Papa: Labor of Sleep
Oct 24, 2017–Apr 9, 2018
Elisa Giardina Papa, screenshot of Labor of Sleep, Have you been able to change your habits?? at sunrise, 2017
Elisa Giardina Papa's Labor of Sleep, Have you been able to change your habits?? consists of a series of short video clips—one for sunrise and one for sunset—that plays out over nine days, and humorously references self-improvement apps. The work examines the idea that sleep has become the newest frontier for gathering behavioral and biological data in order to optimize sleeping patterns, thereby turning the time that our bodies use to rest and replenish into a form of labor devoted to data extraction. In this way, digital devices function as both a poison and its remedy, providing relief for the time they take away. The daily exercises and assessments suggested by Labor of Sleep, Have you been able to change your habits?? rely on a range of motifs that reveal the absurdities of technologically supported self-optimization. The video clips illustrate how we use technologies to regulate human sleeping habits within the rhythms of a wider system—one that includes humans and non-humans, extending from organic matter to digital devices themselves.
Elisa Giardina Papa's (b. 1979) work investigates gender, sexuality, and labor in relation to neoliberal capitalism and technology. Her work has been exhibited and screened at MoMA, New York; Unofficial Internet Pavilion of 54th Venice Bienniale; XVI Quadriennale di Roma; rhizome.org; HEK, Haus für elektronische Künste, Basel, Switzerland; 319 Scholes, New York, among others. Giardina Papa received an MFA from RISD, and a BA from Politecnico of Milan. She lives and works in Berkeley and Sicily.
Sunrise/Sunset was a series of Internet art projects that marked sunset and sunrise in New York City every day from 2009 to 2024. All were commissioned by the Whitney specifically for whitney.org, each project unfolding over a time frame of ten to thirty seconds.
Indicating the switch from day to night and vice versa in one specific location, Sunrise/Sunset projects played with the perception of time and space, underscoring the physical location of the Whitney Museum and the global accessibility of virtual space. The series was organized by Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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