Breathworks
Primary Investigator
Professor Derek McCormack
School of Geography and the Environment, Mansfield College
Partner Organisations:
Kindness Wave
Collaborators:
About the project:
Explore breath in relation to air quality, anxiety, Black Lives Matter, climate chaos, COVID-19, creation, creativity, embodiment, ephemera, health (public, mental and environmental), identity politics, plants, protests and much more.
Three questions are offered to explorers of Breathing Research.
• Who are the breathers?
• Under which conditions do they breathe?
• How can we communicate these conditions?
Breathworks was a participatory digital project initiated by Lucy Sabin, which explored people's unique experiences of breathing. Throughout August 2020, Modern Art Oxford invited its online audiences to contribute a "breathwork" by creatively capturing an experience of breathing. The result was a fascinating and timely collection of personal stories that shed light on the many different ways people experienced breathing.
Breathworks featured the research project Breathing Worlds, conducted by Lucy Sabin and Professor Derek McCormack of the University of Oxford. The Breathing Worlds project was also showcased in the virtual exhibition Responsive Space.
Events:
Breathing Worlds
https://www.youtube.com/embed/7jqVn2iO3J0
Join researchers, practitioners and artists as they discuss the political, personal and environmental worlds we breathe in.
This event accompanies Breathworks, Modern Art Oxford’s digital participatory project led by Lucy Sabin. Breathworks invites audiences to engage in creative storytelling about breathing.
For this fascinating discussion, we welcome Alice Sharp, Artistic Director, Invisible Dust; Patsy Isles, yoga teacher, activist, and Wellbeing Associate at Words of Colour; Derek McCormack, Professor of Cultural Geography, The University of Oxford and Lucy Sabin, Breathworks Project Lead.
Spaces In/between: Critical approaches to care & collectivity online
What does it mean to come together online in the current climate?
Exploring concepts of community and care in online spaces, this panel brings together artists, activists and researchers to discuss individualism, collectivity and care performed through digital technology. Speakers include writer Orit Gat, design activist Maral Pourkazemi and Dr. Francesca Sobande, lecturer in digital media studies.
This event accompanies Breathworks, Modern Art Oxford’s digital participatory project led by Lucy Sabin.
Profesoor Derek McCormack
Project Lead
School of Geography and the Environment, Mansfield College
Professor Derek McCormack is Tutor and Fellow in Geography. Broadly speaking, Derek's interests lie in the area of cultural geography - i.e. he is interested in the many ways people experience and make sense of spaces. His work focuses in particular on the affective/emotional dimensions of this process. To this end he has written about the affective experience of spaces in a range of contexts from arctic exploration, to air travel, to art and performance, to cities.
Lucy Sabin
Artist-Researcher
Lucy Sabin (she/her) is an artist-researcher whose mixed media practice blends environmental humanities, embodied experience and new media. Her recent projects commissioned by Modern Art Oxford – Breathworks and Breathing Worlds – used participatory methods and curatorial practices to articulate and highlight the political and personal theme of breathing. The thematic timeliness of these projects garnered attention from BBC Radio 4 and BBC Arts as well as support from Art Fund and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.
Modern Art Oxford
Partner Organisation
Oxford’s only public space dedicated to contemporary art and culture. Free and open to all, Modern Art Oxford works with you to celebrate the relevance of art and creativity to society today.
Founded in 1965, the gallery is shaped by a longstanding commitment to education and inclusion. We are renowned for our bold and progressive artistic programme that promotes diversity and internationalism and aims to be accessible to the widest possible audience.
Modern Art Oxford’s acclaimed exhibitions, artist commissions, events and participatory activities encourage public engagement with creativity and the arts, and promote the importance of contemporary visual culture in today’s society.
The Kindness Wave
Partner Organisation
The Kindness Wave offers love and comfort to children and young people who are finding this time really difficult to manage.
Contact:
Lucy Sabin, lucy.sabin.20@ucl.ac.uk
Credit: Breathworks installation in Responsive Space (featuring 'breathwork' by Ania Ready) at Modern Art Oxford, 2020. Photo by Helen Messenger
