The moment the sleeper knows he is dreaming

This is a video poem written for shift workers with sleep disorders. Through a performance device, the film recreates the tragic state of insomnia, the sleepy or excited body of the technical governance and continuous self-optimization of the pursuit of correlation. The body is not directly exposed to the camera lens of the film, but is concealed by the metaphor of the object. When the body is constructed as a place of power relations such as science and Technology, medical treatment, production and labor, and the subjectivity is lost in the technical control of life politics, how do we reconcile body ethics with biological capital? The poem is based on Borges's Break of Day.

  • Wu Jiawen
    Director
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    4 minutes 14 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 10, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    1,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    China
  • Country of Filming:
    China
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    32：9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Central Academy of Fine Arts
Director Biography - Wu Jiawen


Born in Guangdong in 1996, he has a master's degree from the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, now living in Beijing and Guangzhou. His creations include installations, photography and motion graphics. His projects are focus on technology, productive labor, the power relations of the body.

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Director Statement

It is generally accepted in biology that almost all life on Earth has a circadian rhythm, and in order to ensure appropriate physiology and behaviour consistent with the circadian rhythm, the cells of our body need to operate according to the biological clock.
Since the invention of the electric light, large-scale social activities can also be carried out at night and continue during the day. We begin to run a 24-hour society, where the boundaries of day and night no longer limit life.
The platform economy has made the hours of retail and knowledge economy workers irregular, and globalization and economic expansion on the blockchain have forced us to work together in different time zones. All of this puts pressure and demands on others to work around the clock.
The 24 hour society is not only prolonging business and public transportation during the day, but it is also reordering time, allowing us to use our time in a more passive and oppressive way.
In the case of hard working people, sleep time seems to be a transactional currency that can be exchanged for working time in order to prioritize real world needs. It is the physiological rhythm that is forced to adapt to social needs when there is a contradiction between biological sleep and social sleep time so that there is a long-term existence. In order to adapt to the all-weather lifestyle, most people usually at the expense of sleep time. Eight-hour day directly determines how much time people have to rest and how much time they have to sleep on their own.
While shift work allows companies to run around the clock and create more jobs, it often results in serious social problems for them, making them sleep-disordered shift workers (SWSD) .
The ethical problems caused by the technological design and use to the body as the economic subject appear constantly.The film is tring to response to these questions.