Breathe My Air

Gerald Nestler + Sylvia Eckermann

Visualizing the Invisible in the Social Environment

A contemporary Pavilion as a temporary Architecture in Urban Environment.

INTRO

The two elementary materials of Breathe My Air are both invisible but crucial for human interaction and sustainability: Air as the basic element by which most 

life as we know it – including ourselves – exists; Thoughts as the basic element by which we form our social and individual lives.

At the core of Breathe My Air are recordings of our notions on Progress, Change and Utopia, and how they affect the world. This exchange of ideas between 

Chinese and Western participants is set inside a specially designed structure in public space, a participatory, recreational space of purified and oxygenated 

air and mutual exchange.

Thoughts

A paradoxical conversation

The conceptual framework for the recordings is based on Chinese as well as Western notions of art, nature and environment. It fashions a platform that 

spans history, time and ideas of both cultures by conducting a conversation of contemporary proponents of art, philosophy and culture. We refer to this mutual

 engagement as a “paradox conversation:” The participants do not meet physically. Their contributions are edited and become a work of art.

Progress, Change and Utopia – the terms at the core of the recordings – are examined for their past and future qualities in the respective cultures as well 

as for a common and present practice. Interpretations are grounded in socio-cultural environments. The more we are sharing them and the more we are 

perceiving our environment as global, the more urgent but prolific this exchange is becoming.

Air Borrowing the View-Pavilion

The exchange is set inside an urban pavilion that traces back to Chinese philosophy and art when scholars would meditate a landscape by inscribing 

poems and meditate the view on these natural “artscapes” from specific architectural structures – the pavilions.

Here, the concept of borrowing the view—the Chinese characters for “pavilion” bear this meaning—comes into play, which has been a cultural method 

to incorporate a distant vista into the composition. A river, the ocean, fields, forests, large trees, or even a building have all served this purpose, but the 

most frequently borrowed scene is a distant mountain. 

Borrowing the scenery of the urban sprawl that makes up our cityscape today where the ‘poems’ of a consumerist society are engraved in the sight of 

everybody, we invite the public to literally inhale an “ambient air of utopian formula” and engage in the exchange of a present utopia.

The Chinese interpretation of the pavilion is fused with a Western approach on art that refers to the development of the White Cube as part of modern 

exhibiting and later the Black Box as its supplement for moving images. 

Our idea for the pavilion as an open structure from where we all project our ideas, utopias and emotions into the surrounding or were we rest for 

introspection, corresponds to our adaptation of yet another showcase – in the Green Box (formerly known as blue box) we combine the qualities of the 

White Cube/Black Box with a participatory, “transparent,” direct approach. 

Although we seal the physical space to allow for the air to retain its quality, we open the pavilion virtually and visually as a space in (or rather out of) which the

 visitors may participate by projecting their own ideas and feelings on co-existence in one global environment that contains culturally diverse approaches to 

life.

Aim By building such a “Third Skin,” we aim to build up a conversation of a multitude of individual voices and from there develop a vocabulary, a method to connect 

these seemingly invisible but vital aspects of our cultural and environmental economies. 

It addresses a common, powerful and imaginative approach to understand, work on and change our personal as well as environmental habitat and set it up 

as our future common assets.

Air bubblesMultiple, Merchandise & Participatory Exchange

Air bubbles—collectibles as well as consumer goods; 

Produce for the collector and the public, they are gelatine balls filled with the exact air composition as infused into the air pavilion! The air bubbles are soft, 

transparent and have a diameter of approx. 8 cm. 

They carry the inscription:

Breathe My Air

Made in China

Air Collection: The air bubbles are artworks with longevity if treated with appropriate care.

Air Consumption: When squeezed they release their content and you take a breath of air!

Participatory Air Exchange: When squeezed and air inhaled the exchange of the utopian air formula is being released into the world. The debris becomes 

for those who identify them as such relicts of a specific value in form (moulded by the use of squeezing) and therefore again a unique collectible as well as 

exchange product.

Participants

in order of recording

Phase I - Europe

Thomas Feuerstein artist, theorist 

PRINZGAU/podgorschek artists

Axel Stockburger artist, game theorist 

Cornelia Offergeld art historian, curator 

Michael Hoepfner artist

Oliver Grau media art historian

Wendy Coones art historian

Oliver Irschitz architect, designer

Wolf-Guenter Thiel art historian, curator, editor

Jasmin Ladenhaufen fashion artist

Karel Dudesek artist 

Phase II - China

Cao Ke Fei theatre maker, director

Li Zhenhua curator, media artist

Yu Qiong emerging documentary film maker

Xing Danwen artist, photographer

Qiu Zhijie artist

Miao Xiaochun artist

Li Shi curator

Renia Ho artist, Arrow Factory art space

Pauline Yao art historian, Arrow Factory art space

Wong Wei artist, Arrow Factory art space

Zhao Tingyang philosopher

Tony Liang Fu emerging cuator, art critic

Xi Chuan poet, writer

Ou Ning artist, designer, editor

Zhang Wei gallerist, Vitamine Creative Space

PROCEDURES

Breathe My Air comprises of 5 phases in total:

Phase I: Subtitled video recordings of European/Western participants

Phase II: Subtitled video recordings of Chinese participants

Phase I + II are completed. 

A project launch for Breathe My Air was held on November 7-9, 2008 at CPU: 798 gallery, 798 art district, Beijing, China. This event distributed information 

on the project’s concept and development, including a screening of the Phase I video.

Phase III: 3-Channel-Video 

Phase IV: Public Space project China (Beijing/Shanghai) 2010 

Web archive/forum

Phase V: Exhibition project Vienna/Austria