I recently discovered the catalogue accompanying the artist Michael Müller’s solo exhibition at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, called “WER SPRICHT? WHO’S SPEAKING?”. I was startled by his lucid and visceral speech and couldn‘t stop contemplating it. Here‘s an excerpt:
„We are confronted with a map of the present and it frightens us into being, a cartography too real, because within its coordinates a photographic likeness of all our mistakes has been implanted and the green of poisoned skies hums its radiated forecasts at us – the sort of dream that won‘t allow you to sleep. The body without unity. Shattered glances that become a pool for the spectators to swim in – the spectorial pool …
And now, the grayness has returned to the sky, marking out a familiarity – a rat-object known by all the rest for the shrillness of its squeals. Pretty soon it will swallow what‘s left of us (Ode to a poet who was recently swallowed by death).“
This, to me, is a visionary snapshot of a cultural environment in which the inherent reality of the body becomes usurped by other realities and the realities of others. These realities exist externally from the realm of the body, as well as within the realm of consciousness.
Relating to breathing, his words „The body without unity“ – in the context he presented them in – stuck out for me. They animated me to think about how practicing natural breathwork relates to being in the world now.
The body needs unity for life to take place in it, for breath to take place in the body. If the body loses its unity, the breath is diminished. Either we restrict breathing and/or overbreathe to deal with the pain of the loss of the body as a unity. The loss of the body as a unity also involves the loss of nature as we knew it. The loss of rhythm, vibration, flow; the earth as a body, ourselves as part of the earth.
Why practice natural breathing then? Is it an endeavour of re-discovery, of re-learning? Is it a form of longing, or nostalgia, a literal homesickness? Is it a work of grieving, grieving as a prerequisite for creating an encounter in the present? What present? – the one that „frightens us into being?“ Why be there?, between „poisoned skies“ and „spectorial pools“?
I don‘t have any answers and I‘m not even sure I understand the questions. But, thanks to Michael Müller, there is a space of aliveness opening up in the contemplation, a space for breath.
Credit: Hatje Cantz
Source: Wer spricht? Who‘s speaking?; Ellen Blumenstein, Travis Jeppesen, Daniel Tyradellis; Hatje Cantz, 2016