Nikos Navridis

Nikos Navridis practice has involved many works using balloons and breath, the two videos  below are documentations of pieces including both. I found his work in a website/blog containing large amount of works related to breathing, it was a very happy day for me since I was having a hard time finding artists that were interested in breath or balloons - what I was interested in at the time. Check the website out here 
www.artbreath.wordpress.com 

Nikos Navridis - Snow Balloons video

I found Snow Balloons interesting because the work was depending on the audience's breath to become. Although this is important in most art practices today, it is especially evident in Snow Balloons since if the audience did not blow up the balloons, no one would. The audience literally leaves a part of themselves inside the work, and subsequently they are united with everyone else's. I see it as a sort of re-encarnation, each balloon a metaphor for each person. Each person, blowing life into the balloon. The only thing I found distracting was that when each balloon was blown up it looked like a breast, a population of breasts. I wonder if it was intentional or not... probably not. 


Nikos Navridis - Looking for a place video

It can be said that in Looking for a place Navridis moves up a step, and 'pushes' the person blowing the balloon, into it. Resulting in a group of people (not the audience) wondering around the room aimlessly as their senses become muted. With their heads inside the balloon, every sense becomes a blur, except for their own breathing and breath surrounding their heads. I was attracted by this work because of that deprivation of senses, cutting everything out except for the air around and inside the person. Nothing else to focus on but it. 

Drawing mid year assessment

Since my drawing and studio work have come together I thought I should also publish the drawing mid year assessment piece, however, I lost that work with my last computer. The work was made when I was using balloons as my main material, and with them, trying to create an inanimate object seem alive or like it was breathing. I am still interested and fascinated by balloons, simply because they are able to hold and keep breath inside. This is the unedited version of the final piece. The latter was forwarded and rewinded to create a breathing motion. 

Josie Do Nizza. Untitled (2012). Gesso on balloon video recording.

Lise Autogena

"The act of breathing is a rhythm of the body that links our existence with everything else. In a shared experience, an exchange, we inhale and filter through our internal systems the expired air from others' breath. Breathing, therefore, constitutes a dialogue between interior and exterior movements, and a way of passing through the world."

This is a quote taken from Lise Autogena's 1996 'breathing productions' - "the first exploration into the act of breathing as a cultural phenomena, and the umbrella name for a series of events and investigations into the most fundamental condition for human life."

When looking through the documentation of the project, I had skimmed through the first quote and had not thought much of it. A couple weeks later I found myself remembering it and trying too figure out where the hell I had seen it. From then on I have gone back to it over again, as I feel it truly relates to my work. I see that 'shared experience' as the encounter that takes place when the work and the audiences 'breath' come together, interior and exterior. 

http://www.autogena.org/Breathing/home.html

At the bottom of this same webpage, there is another quote I have attached myself to -

"We are estranged from that with which we are most familiar" (Hiraclitus, Fifth century BC) 

Breath, in my case is the one subject I want to accentuate at least for a moment and create an experience with. 

Breath on a... Window

Exploring catching breath on a surface. I chose this background since nature is what provides that air which we breath in. It alone, captures my ideas on the air around us supporting life. 

Josie Do Nizza. Untitled (2012). Video recording.

In and out

Focusing a lot more on capturing 'real' breath, rather than making an inanimate object 'hold life' or breathe. The fading in and out of this clip (black to slight colouring) has made me look into altering a space with just light and sound rather than object or this case my mouth.

Josie Do Nizza. Untitled (2012). Video recording

Drawing & Studio

My drawing and studio work has naturally morphed into one. In all the studio work I have done I was always interested in finding a way of holding breath in the images I created, unfortunately the method I was using did not manage to capture my ideas to their full potential. When the drawing paper began, it  inspired me to explore other mediums, such as video and I quickly realised that it was what would really drive my work and excite me. This is why I find it appropriate to also post about my drawing pieces and well as studio, to show the conversation developing between both papers.

This is a work I presented for the Drawing Exhibition Objectduress in August, 2012.

Filmed with on end of the balloon cast around the lens and the other end around my mouth.

                  

Before filming this I was interested in documenting the air/breath inside the cast of the balloon. After making it, the distortion created by the moisture in each breath has also become a significant element in my work.
I see this work as successful because the distortion of the image distracts it from what it actually is, and instead opens up conversations surrounding movement, breath, synchronisation, etc.

A breath of fresh air

The breath of life

Catch my breath

Don't hold your breath

Draw breath

Get my breath back

Hold my breath

In the same breath

Last breath

Out of breath

Save your breath

Take my breath away

Under my breath

Waste my breath