Sounds and Music as response
Created for The Taxonomy of Breathing project by IceBox Collective, “Gasp” is an electroacoustic music work by composer Gina Biver. Incorporated within the piece are live stethoscope recordings she made from visiting communities in the US: the breathing of a firefighter, public school teacher, psychologist, opera singer, nurse-midwife, artist, plus recordings of people who lost their homes in the California wildfires, these breaths and sighs demand the question of how the pandemic, the wildfires, BLM’s fight for freedom, liberation and justice, the smothering effects of poverty and the divisive politics of fear have altered and affected the breathing of those who have lived it.
Audio portraits of breaths snatched from the spaces between words in a debate between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X show what lies hidden in unspoken moments, the breath as a mirror to the soul. For while MLK’s breaths are peaceful, calm, and slow like the ocean; Malcolm X’s are all power and fire -- sudden gasps in between each word that force and thrust his ideas forward into the world. Two important figures who were consistently called upon during our current but agonizingly longtime struggle against racism and hatred.
The collected breaths -- here acting as an archive of the moments within this capsule of time -are what connects us all, for we live with these breaths or die without them. They burn, strain and struggle for us, drown us as we gasp for air. They also have the power to bring life; they heal, balance, and purify. With their exhale they allow a letting-go and a release of pain, and of thoughts and ideas that no longer serve us. Breathing, in this way, manifests not only our fragility, our environment within this moment in history; but our ability to recover, heal and go forth.
An ancient hymn sings of the river that will wash away our sins before we die or before we can live, and becomes the backdrop to this cacophony of breaths and cries. Evidence of the heart-wrenching pleas of the forsaken bystanders at George Floyd’s murder; his own cries for help; and the anguished folks who lost homes in the fires, all ring out. Sounds of breathing through an oxygen mask, the sputtering racket of ventilators like those that occupied our thoughts at the beginning of the pandemic and even the squeaky sounds of a newborn are all there, representing, and this mass of interconnectedness, this communion -- the effects of which will ripple far beyond 2020 -- is codified and captured in the wideness of our collective action of breathing.