Repose en paix (Rest in peace)
speakers, sound, amplifier, arduino, 7m x 0.7m x 1m / 2018
Technical support by Jeon Juhyeong, Kim Seonmyeong
“At that moment I heard a sharp cry, even though the building wall was very thick. It was from the other side of the wall. It had happened during lunch in the middle of the afternoon. To cover up the screaming, they parked two motorbikes by the street near the crematorium. They stepped on the clutch hard to have the noise from the engine hide the scream, but they failed. They tried, but it did not work. The screaming sound lasted for 15 to 20 minutes. It gradually grew weaker and then came to an end.”
- From the interview with a Polish political prisoner Józef Paczyński in the BBC documentary <Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution, Episode 2 Orders and Initiatives>
It was the summer of 2017. The food I bought for the street cats stinks. The cat food is made of chicken. Cats no longer go out to catch mice. Suddenly I encounter the very ordinary and mechanical, yet strange, fact that I have never heard the cries of the countless chickens, hogs, and cows I have eaten when they die.
-H.S.S
A massive amount of euthanasia medicine is used for livestock that has to be buried alive due to foot-and-mouth disease or avian influenza. The sound of their screaming echoes until far into the night.
-H.S.S
“Those who really know how to die are animals, not humans.
When people die, they die like animals.
Shall we go back to the cats. With all due respect, I have witnessed a very tiny cat dying. I saw it just as numerous people have. How the animal looks for a corner before it dies. If there is a territory for dying, there will be a search for that territory. They look for the territory where they can die. And this tiny cat was trying so hard to push itself into a corner. As if it was a suitable place to die ….”
- Interview with Claire Parnet in L’abécédaire by Gilles Deleuze
When this world that has been reduced from reacting to only a specific value goes up in delusion, then perhaps we will enter our most animal world.
-H.S.S
The noble instinct of a dying animal.
The desperate instinct at the end of one’s life, heavily breathing in and out,
Like a flag waving in the wind that cannot be controlled.
-H.S.S