This project and series of publications explores the concept of a poetics of air: a notion borrowed from anthropologist Tim Choy that signals an awareness of the simultaneous material, affective and aesthetic impressions of air and atmosphere. While there is a growing body of work on atmospheric geopolitics and aeromobility, much less attention has been given to the affective and aesthetic dimensions of being in and witnessing air and atmosphere. This project uses the sensory, affective and aesthetic experience of engaging with an artwork – Dryden Goodwin’s large-scale urban installation Breathe – to reflect on the possibility and promise of an airy poetics for expanding popular concerns with atmosphere. It is through producing a moving image that is sustained, ventilated and activated by air – achieved through the artist’s production of a visual sequence and ‘active surface’ – that Breathe performs an airy poetics: it conveys the porosity of breathing bodies, the texture and materiality of air, and suggests what a collective sensing of atmosphere might look and feel like.

My article in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers “Toward a Poetics of Air: Sequencing and Surfacing Breath” is available here.

I also published in The Environmental Scientist about communicating issues of air quality and Dryden Goodwin's artwork "Breathe". Please find the full article below.  

Link to full article: pg.32-37_Engelmann (1)