How do historical processes, infrastructures, socio-economic factors and technologies contribute to the commodification of air? and how do systemic processes perpetuate social and political inequalities while at the same time reshaping built environments and landscapes?
This artistic research investigates the commodification of air and its social, political, environmental implications in the wake of the accelerating collapse of the biosphere and the violent dynamics of a toxic political sphere. By dissecting the intertwined relationships between air, design, and climate control technologies, the project seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of the complexities of contemporary politics of air, breathe and breathability.
Drawing from Peter Sloterdijk's concept of Being in the Breathable (2009) and Achille Mbembe's advocacy for the Right to Breathe (2021), the research critically examines the historical processes transforming air into a commodity. It explores the material, social, and political dimension of air through the lens of artistic endeavours and design as both tool of hegemonic governance and medium for social and political action. Embracing engaged forms of artistic research-led practices—cross-disciplinary, multimodal, and situated—this research will examine, document, and critically interrogate the entanglement between the Right to Breathe and racial capitalism that shapes the landscape of breathability, culminating in a concept of Breathocracy. Visual and material inquiries will uncover nuanced understandings of power relations embedded in the built environment, complemented by spatial analysis and archival research. Conceiving urban spaces as en-plein-air living archives that manifest the juxtapositions of colonial legacies and urban present, while also serving as repositories of multiple histories and experiences of resistance and defiance, the research engages with materiality and stories of the everyday. It investigates the spatial, political, social, and historical urban relations to contribute to challenge established epistemologies through the voices, stories, and perspectives of silenced or otherwise marginalized groups and communities.
Access to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, which includes water, air, sanitation, and housing, is as basic human right established in the 2022 UN convention. By considering access to breathable air a vital biological necessity as well as political possibility (Gumbs, 2015; Gabrys, 2022), the research aims to unveil the unequal and unjust dynamics of the politics of air while advocating for breathable spaces as a universal right.
Supervised by Professor Dr. Füsun Türetken
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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