‘Body at rest’ is a multi-media essay exploring the aesthetic ambivalence of manifestations of withdrawal as a form of resistance and withdrawal as an effect of depression. Through several artistic examples (with an emphasis on sleeping and fatigue as explored by Mladen Stilinovic) ‘Body at rest’ aims to produce insights on the correlation between notions of productivity, non-productivity and agency. ‘Body at rest’ departs from theoretical framings that associate contemporary forms of alienation with transformation of labor structures, its increasing dematerialization and the increasing deployment of cognitive capital as main productive asset. ‘Body at rest’ observes how certain representations of removal that, unlike self-declared forms of withdrawal such as striking with work, are ambiguous aesthetic manifestations of such removal as a form of resistance, contestation. ‘Body at rest’ also attempts to demonstrate how withdrawal can be useful as a means to question the distribution of knowledge in the arts and the predominance of certain forms of performing the work of artistic research. Through a combination of pre-recorded audio and video, ‘Body at rest’ is performed as an act of progressive withdrawal, in which the presenter simulates falling asleep during the presentation in synchrony with a pre-prepared video-narration, allowing for relations between product and producer and expectations to performance to be confounded.