MOVIE

Bare Life

Bare Life

Bare Life depicts a loosely structured, contested concept of freedom tied to various cases and agents: killing and being killed, machines recognizing pain, and the complex ecosystem of empathy that occurs in response. The film investigates three cases in parallel (the order of cases is not sequential). Case 1 shows archival footage of a pest controller specialising in eliminating wild rats with an air gun. Case 2 introduces an interlocutor whose face is covered, sharing personal stories about her idea of freedom and being “inside and outside.” Case 3 describes an experiment from Animal Welfare Laboratory. The project uses deep learning (artificial intelligence) systems to analyze facial expression data of laboratory mice, before and after anesthesia/surgery, suggesting a tool for recognizing the suffering and pain of mice.