Opening: 13 July 2017
Exhibition duration: 20.30-22.30. 2017
Location: EMST, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece
Curator: Sozita Goudouna
Screenings by the artists: Liz Magic Laser, Karen Finley, Kelly Nipper, Raqs Media Collective, Jesper Just, Valie Export, John Latham, Jenny Marketou and Nikos Navridis
Peggy Kliafa participates in the group event with the installation:
“BREATHING BOOTH & THE COST OF BREATHING”
Booth: 2017, 235 x 100 x 100cm. Aluminium profiles, plexi glass, melamine, led light
Vending Machine of oxygen and medicines for dyspnea: 2017, 180x58x37cm. MDF with paint, plexi glass, stickers, sculptures of inhalers by epoxide raisin, led lights, oxygen compressor – oxygen masks
Combat Breathing is a production of Out of the Box Intermedia, conceived and curated by Sozita Goudouna, presented with the collaboration of EMST, in the framework of its public events-talks, consisting mostly of screenings of performances historical and contemporary art works and a participatory installation that aim to investigate the “politics of respiration” within contemporary society, as it has been formulated by philosophers, such as Frantz Fanon, by visual artists, such as Wolfang Tillmans and social movements such as http://www.nosepeg.com.The project takes as a starting point the “shortness of breath” derived from the experience of political pressure and economic austerity in Greece during the last years, exploring its connection with performance art and embodied politics. Air, the most necessary and common of all living resources, becomes a material signifier for the invisible political bonds that constitute a society. Combat Breathing aims to engage with the perceptual and political imaginary of the beholders and to provide the potential of public engagement with breath, so as to encourage multiple perspectives on health, art and life, and so as to establish original methods of understanding the role that respiration plays in our sensory, emotional and spiritual life.
The installation “Breathing Booth” by the artist Peggy Kliafa will be presented in the entrance of the Screening Room.
Installation “BREATHING BOOTH” by Peggy Kliafa
The “Breathing Booth” presents the rate at which the respiratory muscles consume oxygen as they ventilate the lungs and offers oxygen free of charge to its users and the “possibility to obtain from a medicines vending machine” (sculpture) various forms of shortness of breathing and breathlessness devices (sculptures or readymades) such as: inhalers, airway and mask equipment, oxygen therapy equipment. The installation underlines the severity of the problem of breathlessness in the contemporary society and highlights a big “industry” that has become indispensable in ensuring that the citizens can breathe in the urban centres.