Shot over a period of seven years in America, Europe, Africa and Asia, the epic non-narrative work Try to Live to See This consists of three channels of video that represent three elements — water, earth and fire — and a corresponding trio of themes that reflect the existential cycle of birth, sustenance and death. Writes Reeves: "The intense feelings of awe, fear, mystery, hope and ecstasy engendered by our relationship to this cyclic order is the core of meaning and resonance central to this work." Using slow motion to suggest transcendence, and accelerated motion to capture the rush of the modern world, Reeves seamlessly weaves together a chain of images depicting work (women on an early assembly line, Indian women carrying huge mounds of grain on their backs); death (demonstrators dressed as skeletons, the body of a rat on a rocky beach); and birth (a water-splashed stone Buddha and the climactic scenes of a woman in labor). These tapes provided the video component of two installations, The Well of Patience (1988-89) and Eingang/The Way In (1990).