Thursday 15 November 2007, 14.00–18.00
Friday 16 November 2007, 10.20–20.30
Saturday 17 November 2007, 10.20–20.30
Take a Deep Breath
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Nikos Navridis
Difficult Breaths #9 2004 courtesy Bernier / Eliades Gallery © The artist |
Take a Deep Breath is a three-day interdisciplinary symposium that takes a fresh look at the cultural, social and scientific meanings of breathing. Recent environmental and ethical developments are calling for a rethinking of the value of breath and its manifestations in culture and beyond.The symposium explores contemporary ways of thinking about breathing and encourages dialogue between distinguished international participants from a wide range of disciplines by featuring talks, visual art projects, performances, film screenings, and musical events.
Participants include Steven Connor, Lise Autogena, Cornelia Parker, Jane Boston, Max Streicher, Katerina Gregos, Michael Clark, Nikos Navridis, Mark Cousins, Richard Craig and Mikhail Karikis.
Organised by Irini Marinaki, Martine Rouleau and Konstantinos Stefanis.
In collaboration with The London Consortium.
Drinks receptions are kindly supported by Boutari Wines and Cypressa.
With additional support from the High Commission of Canada.
Drinks receptions are kindly supported by Boutari Wines and Cypressa.
With additional support from the High Commission of Canada.
Tate Modern
Starr Auditorium
£40 (£30 concessions), booking recommended
Includes refreshments and entry to all events.
£40 (£30 concessions), booking recommended
Includes refreshments and entry to all events.
Breathing panels:
Visible/Invisible Respiration: There is general agreement that it can be heard and smelt, yet why is it taken for granted that respiration is an invisible manifestation of our being alive? Artists have often explored this paradox. What lies in this tension between the visible and the invisible breath?
Contaminating Breath: The exhaled breath brings out in the world an amalgam of volatile components ranging from vital oxygen to poisonous carbon dioxide. Breathing is vital, yet it can also be fatal. To breathe upon is potentially to infect or contaminate.
Hold It Exercise It Manipulate It: Breathing can be subjected to active and passive forms of control. What are the ways with which we control and manipulate our breath? Does the loss of breath result in the loss of control, or perhaps is it the other way round?
Beyond Breath: Can we think of breathing beyond its principal corporeal function? Breath as pneuma and psyche has always been of great significance to psychology, psychiatry, philosophy and religion. What are the effects of euphoria and phobias, panic attacks or asphyxia? Is there life after breath?
Programme
Day One Thursday 15 November
14:00-17:00 Opening Session
14:00 Welcome
14:15 Steven Connor, Professor of Modern Literature and Theory - College Orator at Birkbeck College London & Academic Director of The London Consortium
15:00 Lise Autogena, artist
Breathing Productions & Most Blue Skies
15:40 Cornelia Parker, artist
Inhaled Cliffs: Exhaled Schoolhouse
16:20 Discussion chaired by Marko Daniel, Curator of Public Programmes Tate Modern
17:00 Drinks reception in Starr Auditorium Foyer, Level 2
18:00 End
Day Two Friday 16 November
10:20-13:15 Panel Session: Hold it, Exercise it, Manipulate it
10:20 Introduction
10:30 Kanarinka, media artist & educator at RISD Digital + Media Graduate Program and School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston
It Takes 154 000 Breaths to Evacuate Boston
11:00 Jean Owen, PhD candidate, The London Consortium
Breathing through Daddy: Anne Sexton’s “The Moss of His Skin”
11:30 Gabriella Bisetto, Head of the Ceramic and Glass programme & Lecturer at the University of South Australia
Little Breaths
12:00 Georgios Halkias, Primary researcher for the Tibet-Islam project at The Warburg Institute, University of London
Inhalation, Exhalation and Realization: The Buddhist Path to Conscious Breathing
12:30 Discussion chaired by Bernard Vere, Lecturer in Fine Arts on the MA in Fine and Decorative Arts at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London
13:15 Break
14:15-18:15 Panel Session: Visible/Invisible Respiration
Short video screening: Drawing Breath (2007) by Lisa Flynn
14:15 Opening remarks
14:20 David Marchant, Senior Lecturer of aesthetic theory, technique, composition and improvisation in the concert art of contemporary dance of Washington University in St. Louis
December (contemporary art dance performance)
14:50 Jane Boston, Senior Voice Consultant at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
It’s a Gas
15:30 Tea and coffee served in the Starr Auditorium foyer
Sleeping Giants (Silenus) installation by Max Streicher
16:00 Opening remarks
16:10 Max Streicher, Artist
Sleeping Giants
Short video screening: Hello Stranger (2006) by Lisa Flynn
16:40 Katerina Gregos, Curator, writer & artistic director of Argos - Centre for Art and Media in Brussels
It’s in the Air: Breath and Breathing in the Work of Nikos Navridis
17:15 Michael Clark, artist
Drawing breath [visual/sound project, 7 min]
17:30 Discussion chaired by Tom McCarthy, Writer & faculty member of The London Consortium
18:30 Drinks reception in the East Room, Level 7
First Love, a song and the yogi (2007) installation by Nikos Navridis
20:30 End
Day Three Saturday 17 November
10:20-13:15 Panel Session: Contaminating Breath
10:20 Opening remarks
10:30 Mary Ellen Leuver, PhD candidate, Yale University
Breathing Room: Breath, Death, Disease, and the Consumptive Utopias of America’s West in the Late Nineteenth Century
11:00 Bendik-Keymer, Isak Berbic & Zlatan Filipović, Faculty members of the American University of Sharjah
Off-cycle (A film from Dubai)
11:20 Anna Roos, Research Associate at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford
Johann Heinrich Cohausen (1665-1750), Salt Iatrochemistry, and Theories of Longevity in his Satire, Hermippus Redivivus (1742)
11:50 Havi Hannah Carel, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of the West of England
Take my Breath Away: a Phenomenology of Breathlessness
12:20 Vanda Playford, artist & General Practitioner
Coca-Cola and Cigarettes, Healing the Soul of Sarah Katherine - Short Film Screening (HD Video, 6 mins, 2007)
12:30 Discussion chaired by Barry Curtis, Emeritus Professor at Middlesex University, Fellow of the London Consortium & Visiting Tutor at the Royal College of Art
13:15 Break
14:15-18:00 Final Panel Session: Beyond Breath
Short video screening: Emily Dashing(2005, 45 sec.) by Holly Crawford
14:15 Opening remarks
14:30 Jones Irwin, Lecturer in Philosophy and Education at St Patrick’s College, Dublin City University
Breathing Philosophy or Just Breathing – An Artaud/Derrida Encounter
15:00 Maria Miranda and Norie Neumark (Out-of-SynC)
Talking About the Weather
15:30 Tea and coffee served in the Starr Auditorium foyer
16:00 Opening Remarks
16:10 Mark Cousins, Director of General Studies and Head of the Graduate Programme in Histories and Theories at the Architectural Association & faculty member of The London Consortium
Title tbc
17: 00 Discussion and final remarks with Steven Connor
18:00 Break
18:30 – 19:30 Musical event/performance in the Starr Auditorium:
18:30 Richard Craig, Flutist
The Unity of the breath (Performance supported by the British Music Information Centre)
Unity Capsule 1975-76 for solo flute [composer: Brian Ferneyhough]
…ne l’aura che trema 2007 for alto flute and live electronics (the air that trembles) [composer: John Croft] Work commissioned by funds from the Scottish Arts Council.
Atem Lied for solo bass flute [composer: Toshio Hosokawa]
19:00 Mikhail Karikis, artist
Orphica + New voice improvisations
Orphica (2007) is the latest music project by Mikhail Karikis. In his performance at Starr Auditorium, Karikis presents compositions from Orphica alongside new voice improvisations, which explore disarticulation and vocal transgression, pushing language to its limits, where voice transforms into raw sound-material and a medium for extremes of expression.
19:30 Drinks reception in the Starr Auditorium foyer
20:30 End
