Description
Air is a fundamental, life-sustaining aspect of existence. As a mediating element, air also shapes human modes of expression, including performance. Yet the air has not always received the attention it deserves, with its virtual omnipresence paradoxically making this mostly invisible element all too easy to forget. ‘On Air’ considers how performance might encourage more careful attunement to the air. Both breathing and environmental contexts of atmospheric exposure are central to its concerns, with pieces that consider diverse lived experiences and degrees of vulnerability to this element. Various contributors reflect on the specific implications of COVID-19 for understandings of and interactions with the air, while others discuss how performed responses and negotiations might foreground aerial embodiment. Above all, this issue invites reflection on what it might mean for us, as individuals and communities, to live and perform — in the air.
READ THE EDITORIAL AND ARTICLE ABSTRACTS online
1 Editorial: On Air
EVELYN O’MALLEY AND CHLOE KATHLEEN PREEDY
7 Tribute to Mike Pearson: Non omnis moriar (Not all of me
will die)
RICHARD GOUGH AND MICHAEL SHANKS
23 Counter-attacking Pollution in Three Aerial Acts
WOOD ROBERDEAU
31 Performing Shared Atmospheres: Museo Aero Solar
SASHA ENGELMANN
38 To ‘Hold In-Common’ in the Midst of Clouds’ Drift
CATERINA ALBANO
44 Love Is in the Air? Notes from Wales on air vapour as
atmospheric affect
FRANCES WILLIAMS
52 Breath^work [Artist pages]
MEGHAN MOE BEITIKS AND KENYA (ROBINSON)
59 ‘This is My Life’: Managing breath in Kirsty Young’s and
Cumbernauld Theatre’s LipSync (2019) and the COVID-19
pandemic
MAGGIE INCHLEY
67 Performances of Exposure and Ethical Spectatorship in
Hanna Cormick’s The Mermaid
MEGAN JOHNSON
73 Airpocalypse: Cycling as a performative art methodology for
investigating air pollution
CLARE NATTRESS
80 Air Time [Artist pages]
NIK WAKEFIELD AND SANDRA ZELLMER
86 Celestial Bodies in a Viscous Sky: Liquid Sky’s reshaping of
aerial space using lasers
KATE HOLMES
90 Conversations with an Invisible Partner
NATALIE ROWLAND
97 Walking in Air
EMMANUELLE WAECKERLÉ AND WILL MONTGOMERY
104 Addressable Volume
EDITH KOLLATH
111 Choreographing Breath and Air in Object Performances
S. R. MAY
117 On Air and in Breath: Atmospheric ethics of exposure
VERONICA JIMENEZ BORJA
127 Signposting the Anthropocene: Air care, poleotolerance and
the queering of ecosystem services
ALEXANDRA R. TOLAND, HARRIET RABE VON FROREICH
AND BEATE KÖRNER
136 Becoming with Wheat: Photosynthesis-Respiration
Collaborations [Artist pages]
AMANDA COUCH
142 Collective Breath: A conversation between artist Neville
Gabie and curator Jeni Walwin
NEVILLE GABIE AND JENI WALWIN
148 Playing with Then and Now: The liveness of breath
ISABEL STOWELL-KAPLAN
154 From an Atmospheric Point of View: Gustav Metzger in the
context of the air war
GABRIELLA DARIS
163 Breathing Air into the Archive: Preserving Otobong Nkanga’s
performance art
LOTTE BODE AND TIMMY DE LAET
171 On Processing the Texts in The Air Journey
LEENA ROUHIAINEN
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REVIEWS
177 Acoustics and Acousmatics across Species
LAURA CULL Ó MAOILEARCA
178 Stratifying the Air: A review of Scott Magelssen’s Performing
Flight
EVAN MORITZ
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180 Notes on Contributors
