The breath between us

The Breath Between Us was a durational performance action that was originally inspired by conversations with scientists from the Welcome Trust Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression. The performance was further developed through discussion with Dr Sonia Rocha, who is currently undertaking research into hypoxia, where she is looking at how cells respond to low oxygen levels. Through these discussions I became interested in working with the invisibility of oxygen and playing with the body’s oxygen levels through using ‘breath’.

In The Breath Between Us I transferred the breath from my body into a large meteorological weather balloon. This took approximately 3.5 hours and was achieved through controlled breathing techniques. The breath slowly became visible as the balloon expanded. A sharp object was suspended at exactly my height and as the balloon reached my height it exploded.

This was a durational performance, lasting approximately 3.5hrs, using the body, a 6ft weather balloon (expanded to 5.3ft) and a metal pole suspended from ceiling with sharp point at the end. There was a live, amplified audio feed from the performance action.