Category: Breath in Literature & Art

„While we breathe, we open time like a path in the grass.“

7. August 2017

In Annie Dillard‘s non-ficition „For the Time Being“, she writes these poetic lines about living being in time and space; the time it takes to be in space and the space it takes to be in time, modulated by our breath.

„Ours is a planet sown in beings. Our generations overlap like shingles. We don’t fall in rows like hay, but we fall. Once we get here, we spend forever on the globe, most of it tucked under. While we breathe, we open time like a path in the grass. We open time as a boat’s stem slits the crest of the present.”

Source: Annie Dillard, For the Time Being, Vintage, 2010

„Asthma became part of his art – if indeed his art did not create it.“

15. July 2017

Breath in Literature & Art

by Nicola Caroli

In his post „Writing and Breathing: Proust and Beckett“, Mark Bowles draws parallels between how Proust‘s asthma, Walter Benjamin‘s heart palpitations and Beckett‘s breathlessness are embodied within their writing styles. He himself was inspired by an essay called „Beckett‘s atmospheres“ by Prof. Steven Connor, Professor of English in the University of Cambridge.

“And what I’m doing, all-important, breathing in and out and saying, with words like smoke, I can’t go on, I can’t stay, let’s see what happens next.” (Beckett, „Texts for Nothing“) Read More

The uses and abuses of air (1)

16. May 2017

Breath in Literature & Art

by Nicola Caroli

The Life of Breath Project’s PI Havi Carel has written this brilliant essay about the characteristics of air and our relation-ship to it. This relation-ship is tendentially a blissful one but one which changes radically when air looses its inherent capacity of nourishment and communication because its qualities have been altered or impaired. She quotes extensively from Terror from the Air by philosopher Peter Sloterdijk who discusses the idea of ‘atmoterrorism’ and makes her case that it’s high time for us to stand up for air.
“Air surrounds us. It is always there, its absence abhorred by nature. Unlike other natural elements, it is invisible, unlimited, and freely available. It is a plenitude, nature’s generosity; it is seemingly endless and expansive. Air is also of and for sharing. We share air when we laugh or talk together, when we breathe together, when we kiss. Air mediates the space between people. Thus air is both plentiful and shared. The atmosphere envelops us, providing oxygen, warmth, and shielding us from radiation. Wrapped around our planet, it is a protective layer within which all life exists. Read More

Godzilla’s Atomic Breath Types

1. April 2017

Breath in Literature & Art

by Nicola Caroli

In my research on breath-related subjects I came across a video game with fascinating breath types by the prehistoric/fantastical reptile hybrid „Godzilla“. Godzilla: The Game is made by Natsume Atari for Play Station 3 and 4. There are different modes in which the game can be played, and where Godzilla is given different modes of attack, based on different Godzilla films. In the „Evolution Mode“, Godzilla is given atomic breath upgrades to attack its enemies, for example: the ability to use atomic breath to fly, as in the film “Godzilla vs. Hedorah” (1971) as well as fire Minilla’s smoke rings in the film “Son of Godzilla” (1967) or use a white misty atomic breath in the original “Godzilla” film (1954).
I found it interesting that in the game industry, breath is seen as an upgrade and as possessing atomic power which benefits even Godzilla.

The Breath Communication Device

15. March 2017

Breath in Literature & Art

by Nicola Caroli

Interactive Designer Stephanie Fynn has created her own breath communication device. Breath communication devices are used for people who can‘t communicate verbally, for example, someone with Locked-In Syndrome. Stephanie Fynn writes beautifully about her own motivation for creating this device and shows images of her creative process. Read More

The Breath Communication Device

15. March 2017

Breath in Literature & Art

by Nicola Caroli

The Breath Communication Device

15. March 2017

Breath in Literature & Art

by Nicola Caroli

The Romantic Disease

20. February 2017

Breath in Literature & Art

by Nicola Caroli

In 2014, when visiting in London, I heard of an exhibition about tuberculosis called „The Romantic Disease“ and knew this had be good. So my friend Jane and I journeyed all the way out to Brentford to the Watermans Art Centre. The artist Anna Dumitriu had meticulously composed a space for her investigation into the disease with bacteria laced textiles, historical writings and instrumentation and miniatures of hospital life. Read More

Breath Myth

11. February 2017

Breath in Literature & Art

by Nicola Caroli

This weekend I visited Amy Feldman‘s exhibition „Breath Myth“ at Blain Southern Gallery in Berlin.

Enter – an industrial, rectangular space – large grey-toned canvasses with primal doodles on them. The aesthetic is visceral and abstract, solid and hollow, dirty and clean at the same time. The doodles remind one of intestines but all the formations are complete, and thus unlike intestinal or airway passages. The playful, yet serious character of the images is mirrored in their titles: blatantly as in „Jolly Gloom“, jarringly as in „Chronic Comic“ or subtly as in „Ghost Host“ or, indeed, the title of the exhibition „Breath Myth“. Read More

Before stethoscopes were invented…

17. January 2017

Breath in Literature & Art

by Nicola Caroli

Excerpt from Diary by Gavin Francis from the London Review of Books. A beautiful and educational description of the workings of the heart.

“Before stethoscopes were invented, physicians would listen to their patients’ hearts by laying one ear directly onto the skin of the chest. We’re accustomed to laying our heads against the breasts of our lovers, our parents or our children, but once or twice when I’ve rushed out on an urgent house call, leaving my stethoscope behind, I’ve had to rediscover the traditional method. It’s an odd sensation – intimate yet detached – to apply your ear to the chest of a stranger. It helps if you stick a finger in the unoccupied ear. Once you tune out all the background noise you begin to hear the sound of blood as it makes its way through the chambers and valves of the heart. The classical belief was that blood travelled to the heart in order to be mixed with vital spirit, or pneuma, rarefied from the air by the lungs. The ancients must have imagined a churning within; air frothing with blood the way wind whips up waves on the sea. The first time I placed my ear to a patient’s chest I was reminded of holding a conch shell as a child, listening to the imagined ocean within. Read More