Taxonomy of Breathing

Taxonomy of Breathing

Tax·on·o·my: a way of charting and organizing knowledge

is a socially conscious, multidisciplinary art project that processes trauma by mapping recent world events using the connective lens of breath.

Taxonomy of Breathing is a socially conscious, multidisciplinary art project that investigates our current societal moment through the lens of breath—its vulnerability, its oppression, and its power of transformation. The fragility of the body—and breath as its essential element—is a manifestation of our environment, our historical moment, and our political and social context. It is at once foundational and aspirational, embodied and symbolic. 

This current watershed moment can in many ways be crystallized, condensed, illuminated, through the lens of the breath. The breath—our respiratory system—is the primary target of this virus that has swept and is still reshaping the world. It is the site of the transgression, the violence, the oppression that catalyzed a racial justice uprising that has not been seen in a generation: “I CAN’T BREATHE.” Wildfires choking the West. Covid-induced isolation resulting in blue skies in Beijing and Delhi. Must we choose between livelihoods and the black lung? Pandemic, racial injustice, environmental cataclysm—the breath connects them. Last but not least, however, the breath holds the promise of transformation.  In the midst of the despair, the desperation, the dissolution, and depression that pervades this slow-moving unraveling of life as we knew it, there is an expanding movement towards mindfulness and meditation, anchored by and centered around a simple observation of the act of breathing. Grounding us, slowing us, silencing us, giving us space to expand, offering us distance and perspective on what we can and cannot control. In some ways, it seems that perhaps the breath is all we control…except when we can’t.

There is an expression used in some Spanish-speaking countries concerning memory and conflict: “respirar por las heridas,” which translates to "breathe through wounds." In this moment, it can also help us locate breath as both the site of the wounds and the redemptive possibility inherent in them—the promise of healing, faith in the regenerative power of life, our ability to survive. This project explores the “act of breathing” as an archive of fleeting moments.

Taxonomy of Breathing was born of the basic need to understand the world of 2020. A few artists – now the ICEbox Collective-- started by drawing a map. We charted current events: police brutality, smoke & wildfire, and COVID attacking the lungs. We found these seemingly disparate disasters were all connected through the breath. And in following the thread of breath through spiritual and healing practices, and the concept of “breathing through the wound,” we discovered a platform of connection across cultural boundaries to listen and to heal; and a structure to spark conversations and build an archive of this watershed moment in history.

Global issues need global perspectives, and maps are currently being distributed across the globe to gain critical and diverse perspectives on how people are experiencing their world. The maps create an international round table discussion to gain a more complete understanding of the complexities of this historical moment. The maps are the source material for a complex body of ART projects that further unpack and explore individual elements of the map--drawings, photographs, paintings, videos, and music compositions, all in various stages of production, from complete to conceptual. Taxonomy of Breathing aims to generate in the viewer, the listener, the breather, an embodied effect that redirects awareness to the centrality of this simple, most foundational vital act and expands to the political, social, environmental, intellectual and spiritual, ripples that expand from it and touch the entire world.