Architectures in Air

Architectures in Air was a curatorial project organised by Bernice Donszelmann and Helen Robertson which presented audio works and an evening of live performances at the Brixton Library gallery.

A painted architectural intervention by Bernice Donszelmann and Helen Robertson subtly demarcated the “empty” room as a site of potentiality and action; a frame for all that was to take place in the space across the duration of the project – the audio and live work and other on-going activities that this flexible space supported. This staging device also enfolded the to and fro of exhibition visitors and other users of the space.

In “The Forgetting of Air’ by Luce Irigaray the idea of a solid ground dissolves in air. Air is seen to resist appropriation; it exists within us and beyond, allows movement, sustains us and is something we share. Thus, air has a political and personal import and is embedded in social and wider ecological relations. Using audio, architecture projection and performance as a curatorial project, Architectures in Air foregrounded the elusive properties of air, breath, bodily movement and voice and their potential to reshape how we consider human agency. A compilation of audio works played on a continuous loop for the duration of the exhibition – falling silent when workshops or other events took place in the room and during the performance evening.

The project brought together a breadth of female voices with contributions from an art historian, a specialist in Languages and Cultures of East Africa, an architect, fine artists, a dancer and singers: Anke Blümm, Emma Cheatle, Bernice Donszelmann, Tobi Alexandra Falade, Kirsty Ferguson-Lewis and Ensemble, Rose Gibbs, Ida Hadjivayanis, Jess Heritage, Kkx, Susan Morris, Isabelle Pead, Helen Robertson with Antoinette Brooks-Daw, Demelza Woodbridge.

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