Dying for the Other is a video triptych, documenting the lives of mice used in breast cancer research and humans suffering from the same disease. In order to produce this video, da Costa documented scenes of her own life during the summer of 2011 and combined them with footage taken at a breast cancer research facility in New York City over the same time frame.
Dying for the Other is a video triptych that juxtaposes the lives of mice used in breast cancer research and a human suffering from the same disease. Shot over the course of three months during the summer of 2011, I document scenes from my own life combined with footage taken at a breast cancer research facility I was granted access to during the same time frame. Dying for the Other contemplates the ties between the lives of research animals and human survival. While known to most humans in the abstract, killing of animals for the sake of medical research is generally kept hidden from the public, and gets “revealed” in stunt activities performed by organizations such as the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Neither of those practices -- intentional secrecy, nor the mediagenic scandal -- help with the messiness embedded in the practice of maintaining one kind of life by killing another. I believe it’s helpful to render the ethical, emotional and economic factors more transparent to an interested public, unwilling to blindly accept a black and white picture of the situation. Dying for the Other attempts to give this messiness a form that disallows simple rationalization in either one direction or the other.
Early versions of the project have been shown at George Mason's University Gallery, as part of "Ecocultures," in Eyebeam's Project Gallery in New York City and at the Cinéma le Palace, Le Vigan, France as part of "Jusqu'ici, tout va bien," (3rd edition of "Rencontres des arts numériques, électroniques et médiatiques".
The final version of the project has now been completed and is scheduled to show at several locations over the upcoming months. Upcoming September 2012 in New York: Art Action Environment
Dying for the Other is part of da Costa's Cost of Life project series, addressing her current interest in the struggle for survival of human cancer patients and its relation to the ethics and politics of health. The series is being supported by the Creative Capital Foundation.
