As we breathe it in and breathe it out the cosmos repeatedly penetrates the anthropos as it does for all living bodies alike. As wind it carries organic and inorganic particles, living and fossilized, across mountains, valleys and oceans. For Hippocrates it was the most powerful of all the forces of nature. For everything between earth and heaven is full of wind; for wind is food for fire, and without air, fire could not live. But it is mostly invisible to the naked eye, and direct experience can often not grasp it. Yes, if air was visible it would perhaps be easier to construct a solid pedagogy and a direct awareness around its waste. 

But what were those cameras filming when, mounted on anthropomorphic robots, they entered first the nuclear plant of Fukushima after the disaster? They didn’t film much: empty, abandoned machine rooms. And when they arrived at the heart of the wrecked reactors: some rare debris and just a bit of steam wafting around the chamber. The power of these images resided precisely in their incapacity to represent the hugeness of the phenomenon they were confronted with. In this sense, these images were properly sublime. By remaining invisible, the highly irradiated air had become an all the more dreadful threat, as it pierced the screens worldwide with the absence of its image, affecting viewers in a physical way. 

We are on the one hand saturated by an ever growing stream of images. On the other hand we are affected by highly dynamic processes that precisely elude and transcend the spectacularity of these images: climate change, electromagnetic radiation, digitalisation. Let’s imagine performance as the unexcelled situation wherein the volatile, the invisible, and the barely representable serve themselves as subjects for a direct, highly charged and sensitive communication between spectator and stage. All sharing the same air. All holding their breath.