The Rabbit Always Dies
Book and short film, 2025
An experimental documentary that reveals facts and fantasies of the history of pregnancy tests from the 1930s-60s which relied on the use of live frogs and rabbits. These pregnancy tests changed the world: they expanded our understanding of hormones, gave women more reproductive choice, and caused ecological crisis- decimating certain amphibian populations.
This work lives two parallel lives, as an 80-page risograph printed artist book and a short film that incorporates risograph animation and historical images.
The Book
80 page, hardbound and hand stitched, edition of 100.
The book can be purchased for $47 plus shipping. Please contact oataper@gmail.com for details.
The frames of the animation are spread across the variable edition. The animation is done at 12 frames a second. Each book contains 1/4th of the frames, so though every book contains images from every second of animation, they do not contain all the same frames. As each page could be one of four options, each book in the edition is likely to have a slightly different recombination of images.
