Breath work: visualizing the invisible and relational breath

ABSTRACT

In this paper I explore the significance of the breath in contemporary art. While breathing operates at the margins of perception, its symbolic possibilities are frequently visualized in photography, video and performance-based works. I catalyse Allan Kaprow’s instructive breathing piece, Performing Life (1979), to open up a perspective on the corporeal, creative and inter-subjective dimension of the breath in the work of Australian artists Julie Rrap, Daniel Mudie Cunningham and the late Australian/Italian artist Katthy Cavaliere. These artists, via a diversity of means, perform breathing and inadvertently achieve Kaprow’s intention of drawing attention to what is overlooked in everyday life. I examine how Rrap, Cunningham and Cavaliere’s works induce a consciousness of the breath in the viewer. Further, I have undertaken this examination by reflecting on the unavoidable connection between breathing and death. This discussion brings important detail to embodied spectatorship whereby ‘breath work’ is viewed as engendering an awareness of embodied subjectivity, creativity and community.

KEYWORDS:

• Breath work
• performative photography/video
• breath and breathing
• inter-subjectivity
• life and death
• Allan Kaprow

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Cherine Fahd is an academic, artist and writer working in the field of photography. She holds a doctorate from Monash University, Melbourne and is Director and Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of Technology Sydney.

ORCID

Cherine Fahd http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3404-1535

Notes

1 For more information see Taoist Tai Chi Society of Australia Inc. (http://www.taoist.org.au/content/standard.asp?) (accessed 14 December 2018).

2 See http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/news/releases/2018/06/07/318/ (accessed 14 December 2018).

3 In a face-to-face conversation with Julie Rrap on 3 December 2018.

4 One cannot help but read this work through Cavaliere’s premature death, and wondering if the artist had a suspicion that her life would be cut short.