Air works: air as material in contemporary installation and performance art in a time of climate emergency

Abstract

Air is a politically incisive material in the climate emergency. Transcending national and political boundaries, air activates a power dynamic distributed asymmetrically between users (breathers/protesters), carbon contributors (polluters), and those of our elected rank (policymakers). This thesis proposes air as a new aesthetic of the climate crisis. This practice-led research (re)considers the creative potential of the material of air in contemporary art and performance through experimentation with its physical components and affective qualities. Air simultaneously and uniquely embodies lyrical imaginative thinking and physiological experience. The research draws from contemporary artists Latai Taumoepeau, Teresa Margolles, Katie Paterson and Olafur Eliasson, as well as the artist’s own extensive body of work. Developed alongside the dissertation are artworks, or AIR WORKS, that critically interrogate the embodied material reality of the climate crisis and the creative possibilities of feminist perspectives. Across four installation and performance works, the material of air narrates evolutionary pasts, maps the dimensions of the current climate crisis, and imagines possible ongoing climate futures. This dissertation connects air to material feminisms, exemplifying the co-constitutive nature of language and material (Alaimo and Hekman). Air’s invisibility demonstrates material feminisms as it facilitates normal physical, emotional and intellectual functioning as well as eliciting imagination. Critical feminist perspectives underscore the material investigation of air (Star, Dunn, Puig de la Bellacasa, Neimanis) and the climate crisis aesthetic (Yusoff and Gabrys, Wazana, Tompkins, Wynter). Storytelling as feminist practice (Haraway, King, Le Guin) assembles speculative pasts, presents, and futures, and imagines creative feminist alternatives. The AIR WORKS and this dissertation make important contributions to new knowledge by expanding an understanding of air as material through the innovative manipulation of the chemical and biophysical components of air in performance and installation. The AIR WORKS present air as a potent aesthetic of international power relations relating to the climate crisis. This research demonstrates that air creatively invents and shapes feminist climate futures