Pleural Space: Taking-Breath Again, Again, Again

In anatomy, pleural space aids optimal functioning of the lungs during breathing. It is considered a dynamic and potential space. Breath-taking was a site-situated sound art installation exhibited at Mussikens Huis, Aalborg, Denmark, as part of RE:SOUND, the 8th International Conference for Histories of Media Arts 2019. It consisted of a one and a half-hour looped soundscape heard through headphones while sitting in a soft chair looking out over the Scandinavian landscape and reading a small booklet. The soundscape iterated a short analytical text cobbled from medical texts on the physiological phases in a dying person’s breathing. Each iteration was resounded through successive and accumulative acts of cutting out the liminal hiatus between an inhale and an exhale, while at the same time, performing the characteristics of that phase of respiration. Here, pleural space is extended between the heart, lungs and ears in sound that pans, triggers and amplifies emotive expression only relatable through embodied experience. The booklet contextualised the making of this soundscape including coincidence with other sound works and theoretical discourse. Written in a personal and intimate voice, one body to the next, it reinvested in pleural space more prosaically with those two close surfaces moving against and because of the other. The experience of listening to the soundscape is softened, agitated and enhanced when reading the booklet. In this book chapter, I critically reflect and re-present this work as a gesture that advances and refines the original booklet to be read and experienced alongside the soundscape. Together they shape a potential space, another pleural space.