"ego breathing". By Brigitte Wilfing

[modul-dance]

On my residency at ADC Genève I started out by researching the movement in my new piece ego breathing. This piece is based on a fictional scenario (although it is growing steadily less fictional in today’s world), in which even air, the last thing shared by everyone, becomes privatized.

ego breathing is a performance and a living installation that presents an existential state of being revolving around the basic life sign of breathing and the will to grow as large as one can and to take control of as much surrounding space as possible.

The process of inflating oneself with a pneumatic skin restricts the biological body in a way that determines its movement as well as breathing itself. The breath is used to inflate the second skin and the performer’s extended muscles, breasts and even lungs store air.

On this conceptual cutting edge, our existential topic runs up against the social and political impact of a liberal economy that still believes in unlimited growth. The privatization of air is the last step in the hopeless attempt to make every single aspect of human life profitable. This process comes to form a sort of loop as the human being tries to make a profit on himself.

Every action unfolds in a recurrent loop, constantly throwing the individual back on himself and producing in this way the existential loneliness presented in this piece.

I am deeply grateful for the generous hospitality of Anne Davier and Claude Ratzé and for the impressively spacious studio they made available to me. I am in love with this place and I very much hope to return some day.

Picture: © Michael Schultes