Shelf Life: An Opera is an experimental opera that explores the absurd and often invisible infrastructures surrounding our lives. Through repetition, obsession, and satire, everyday protocols are transformed into a dreamlike landscape where memory, pattern recognition, and surveillance take center stage. The piece follows characters caught in compulsive cycles: one fixated on expiration dates, another a guard navigating the edge between order and chaos. Their stories unfold in a parallel dimension—a “fourth world”—where ritualized surveillance replaces reality and infrastructure masquerades as public service. Blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, performance and institution, the work traverses the surreal, the magical, and the resistant. It is a contemporary opera infused with strong visual and performative elements that weave together art, sound, textile, poetry, and scenography.