The Experience of a Rat

“This experimental video uses a rat in a 12-frame Stop Motion loop, structurally appropriating Muybridge, to critique the aggressive, futile cycle of discontinuous production and invisible labor in the Capitalist Order.”

This ultra-short, experimental video art piece serves as a stark apparatus for decoding the aggressive rhythm and discontinuous production of contemporary life. The work is built upon a Stop Motion loop composed of just 12 frames, using this brief, intense format as an installation of shock that conveys the systemic pressure of a speed-obsessed society. The central figure, the rat, is placed to represent the archetypal subject of the urban underclass—the individual whose labor is rendered invisible and who is constantly forced into a struggle for survival. What we observe is not an advancement, but a fruitless scurry trapped in a vicious cycle. As the image repeats, it whispers that what we perceive as progress is, in fact, nothing more than an exhausting, self-referential recurrent routine. Rhythm/12 Frames compels the viewer to question both their own limits of perception and the grim reality of existence reduced to a survival mechanism within the system

Director: Mehmet Talha Gürel