Entanglements

Aerocene PM2.5 is able to float in the air without burning fossil fuels. The balloon’s transparent envelope is filled with air and a high concentration of black carbon (extracted from the polluted air in Mumbai), which absorbs the heat of the sun. PM2.5 also absorbs sunlight, making it possibly the second largest cause of global warming after CO₂. Aerocene PM2.5 repurposes these polluting particles from the air, transforming them through the act of flying in a thermodynamic journey. Harnessing the potential of air, sunlight, and particulate matter, the sculpture becomes airborne without the use of fossil fuels, helium, hydrogen, solar panels, batteries, or burners. Packed, the sculpture can carry approximately five and a half pounds (2.5 kilos).

Courtesy the artist and Aerocene Foundation; Andersen’s, Copenhagen; Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles; Pinksummer Contemporary Art, Genoa; and Neugerriemschneider, Berlin

In A Thermodynamic Imaginary, different artworks cast their shadows in an ever-changing lightscape, where all is floating, revealing, enlarging, and fading away. What begins to take shape in the suspended motion of these shadows represents the Aerocene, a new era for existence on Earth that focuses on the air as a dynamic habitat on which life depends. In the dispersal of light, visitors confuse their shadows with their neighbors’ as gestures overlap, mirror, and intersect in a black-and-white scenography. Bodies and sculptures merge with the other entities in the room, be they human or non-human, organic or constructed. They can be read as representative of a cosmic level of existence, imagined as planets in the night sky, or of an atomic level, as the electrons and protons that exist as the building blocks of all matter. This subversive treatment of scale in the installation pushes visitors to consider the imaginative potential in simultaneously conceiving of the microscopic and the cosmic.

Within A Thermodynamic Imaginary are excerpts from two video works, Tata Inti (2018) and Living at the bottom of the ocean of air (2018). The latter depicts the Argyroneta aquatica, a spider/web that lives mostly underwater and which, unlike most aquatic animals, is not equipped with gills. To survive, the spider builds a bubble of air in which it lives. Water is expected to cover entire territories while simultaneously exposing geopolitical inequalities that will create more than two billion climate refugees by the end of 2100. The artwork speculates on the care needed not only for the ocean, but also the ocean of air on which life depends in interrelated, webbed ecosystems and the responsibility that this implies.

Tata Inti shows the Aerocene community in 2017, collaborating with the 33 communities of Salinas Grandes in Jujuy, Argentina, to demonstrate that no lithium, solar panels, batteries, hydrogen, helium, or fossil fuels are needed to elevate and fly humanity to other levels. On January 25, 2020, the Aerocene community set 32 world records recognized by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). This is, to date, the most sustainable flight in human history; it raised awareness that the “green rush” to mine lithium for batteries is polluting and reducing one of the scarcest resources in the Salinas Grandes salt flat: water.

Courtesy the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles; and Neugerriemschneider, Berlin

“Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value.” —Buckminster Fuller

Museo Aero Solar, initiated in 2007, is an open and growing collection of community-built floating museums from around the world. To form the sculpture, reused plastic bags are cut then pasted together to create canvases on which participants draw and write personal stories. Outdoors, they inflate to form a space full of air heated only by the sun, floating without the use of fossil fuels, helium, hydrogen, solar panels, batteries, or burners. These balloon-like museums offer an open invitation to everyone to reduce, reuse, and recycle in order to turn plastic, a notorious material of our times, into a mind-expanding material for the Aerocene era. Anyone anywhere can build a Museo Aero Solar using the set of instructions accessible through Aerocene.org and a DIT (Do-It-Together) ethos fostered by the Aerocene community. To date, hundreds of thousands of plastic bags have been rescued from over 50 communities across more than 30 countries in an act that embodies an ethos of care. Moving us toward the era of Aerocene, Museo Aero Solar resists earthly power structures, like borders and their policing, that are used disproportionately to discriminate against certain populations but whose effects impact us all.

Courtesy Aerocene Foundation

This portable flight starter kit includes an inflatable aerosolar sculpture that becomes buoyant with nothing but the heat of the sun and infrared radiation from Earth’s surface, without the use of fossil fuels, helium, hydrogen, solar panels, batteries, or burners. Fully open-source and collaborative, Aerocene’s aerosolar sculptures are always evolving through an ongoing, shared process of costruction by the dedicated and diverse global community of practitioners who appropriate and improve its functionalities, strengthening the DIT (Do-It-Together) ethos fostered by the Aerocene community. The Aerocene Backpack has been borrowed around the world for a total of 103 tethered flights and 16 free flights. These aerosolar journeys trace aeroglyphs, or shapes and symbols created in the air, through the use of a motion tracker that records them digitally. These designs are signatures of and for the air, destined for the planetary declaration of independence from fossil fuels in support of global environmental justice.

Courtesy Aerocene Foundation

On January 25, 2020, the aerosolar sculpture Aerocene Pacha flew with a message written with the communities of Salinas Grandes in Jujuy, Argentina, emblazoned on its surface: “Water and Life are Worth More than Lithium.” Floating completely free from fossil fuels, batteries, lithium, solar panels, helium, and hydrogen, the Aerocene pilot Leticia Noemi Marquès set 32 world records certified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). This achievement marks the most sustainable flight in human history and one of the most important experiments in the history of aviation.

Completed in solidarity with the 33 Indigenous communities in the Salinas Grandes region, represented by the people of Tres Pozos, Pozo Colorado, San Miguel del Colorado, and Inti Killa de Tres Morros, the flight amplified their voices in unison against harmful lithium mining practices in northern Argentina. Developed in collaboration with Aerocene, Aerocene Pacha makes clear that lighter-than-air human flight is possible and raises awareness of multispecies communities at threat in our age of planetary climate crisis. As Saraceno comments: “We are flying with our head in the clouds but our feet on the ground. Fly with Aerocene Pacha presents an achievable utopia and a challenge to us all to connect together and change our habits, not our climate.” Named after Pacha Mama, the Andean concept that connects what lies below and above Earth’s surface with the furthest reaches of the cosmos, Aerocene Pacha serves as a reminder of our interconnectedness as earthly beings, centuries-old systems of knowledge that predate the Capitalocene, and our shared fate with the planet and all who coexist within the terrestrial realm.

(Image courtesy Studio Tomás Saraceno.)

Aerocene is an interdisciplinary artistic community that seeks to devise new modes of sensitivity, reactivating a common imaginary towards an ethical collaboration with the environment and the atmosphere, free from carbon emissions.

(Image courtesy Studio Tomás Saraceno.)

Initiated in conversations between Tomás Saraceno and Alberto Pesavento in 2007, Museo Aero Solar unfolds in the space formed between human and nonhuman participants in the simple acts of cooperation and the reusing of plastic bags to collectively produce an aerosolar sculpture, capable of moving on air, using only the power of the Sun.

(Image: Museo Aero Solar, 2007 – . Prato, Italy, 2009 with Alberto Pesavento, Tomás Saraceno, Janis Elko, Till Hergenhahn, Giovanni Giaretta, Marco, Alessandro, Manuel Scano, Michela Sacchetto, and Matteo Mascheroni. Photo: Janis Elko. Photo licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Courtesy Museo Aero Solar and Aerocene Foundation.)

Aerocene is an open platform for the development of aerosolar sculptures floating in the air, free from carbon emissions. Aerosolar journeys are a new way of traveling in the Aerocene epoch, collaborating with the atmosphere instead of industrializing, restricting and capitalizing off of it. The Aerocene App develops on the Float Predictor, allowing for endless virtual journeys around the globe without CO₂ emissions. The system utilizes open meteorological data to predict aerosolar trajectories based on real-time weather forecasts.

(Image courtesy Studio Tomás Saraceno.)

We Do Not All Breathe the Same Air, an installation commissioned by The Shed and inspired by the writings of science journalist Harriet A. Washington, from which the piece also draws its title, is a visualization of the uneven distribution of air quality and particulate matter—or particle pollution—across the United States. State-wide air pollution regulation agencies use a machine called the Beta Attenuation Mass Monitor (BAM) to measure the particulate matter in the air over time. The machine’s vacuum pump pulls a measured and controlled amount of air through filter tape every hour, catching particulate matter in the process. The resulting dots, ranging in tone from light gray to black, usually discarded or archived after the numerical data has been collected from the machine, reveal how what we breathe reflects variance across spatial, racial, social, and political factors that determine whether one can exercise their right to clean air. Washington, who contributed an essay to the exhibition’s catalogue, has shown that race, not class, is the strongest determining factor in access to clean air. Moving forward will require both the realization and recognition that not only do we not all breathe the same air, but that not all have the right to breathe. Proceeds from We Do Not All Breathe the Same Air support nonprofit organizations that work with New York communities affected by air pollution.

Courtesy the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles; and Neugerriemschneider, Berlin

What is circulating throughout the very air we breathe, and who has the right to breathe, knowing that not all breathe the same air? As Rebecca Solnit has said during the Covid-19 pandemic, “There’s another pandemic under our noses, and it kills 8.7 million people a year.” Hidden in the dust we breathe is particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5), or pollution particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, a deadly substance created by burning fossil fuels. PM2.5 is the most dangerous of the particulate matter in our atmosphere because of its size: its small diameter means it is able to pass through our body’s defenses, infiltrating our lungs and blood streams. How will we free the air from particulate matter?

In Particular Matter(s), a beam of light illuminates dust particles of domestic, earthly, and cosmic origin whose trajectories are influenced by visitors’ movements. A call to action in a moment of ongoing ecological crises, Particular Matter(s) is an exercise in attunement to bodies and forces on air, inviting us to heighten our capacity to notice that which floats around and moves within us. It also offers an apt example of situated knowledge: though the beam of light is the same, it reveals new information floating in the air each time the work is turned on for new visitors to experience.

These same pollution particles revealed by the light can have devastating effects on spider/webs as well as human health, and become heard and felt in the third movement of Free the Air, through spider/web sonification technology and the situated knowledge of spider diviners.

Courtesy the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles; and Neugerriemschneider, Berlin

In 2019, Studio Tomás Saraceno and The Shed began the process of collecting tapes by reaching out to various federal, state, county, and local government agencies that use the Beta Attenuation Mass Monitor technology as part of their air quality monitoring initiatives. Saraceno incorporated a selection of these tapes as part of his installation We Do Not All Breathe the Same Air. During the outreach process, we received various responses from these agencies, many of which were willing to participate and start collecting tapes specifically for the Shed commission. This table, included in the exhibition catalogue alongside an essay on the artwork by Shed assistant curator Alessandra Gómez, details those contributors and is a reflection of the collective effort of many people working in various roles, such as environmental specialists, chemists, and entire air monitoring teams, who made this artwork possible over three years.

(Image courtesy Studio Tomás Saraceno.)

Commissioned by The Shed, the installation Free the Air: How to hear the universe in a spider/web contains a multisensory performance within The McCourt. In the name of inter- and intraspecies dialogue in affirmation of invertebrate rights, the installation asks participants to radically reorient their bodies to the environment around them, connecting with other beings through engaged listening and movement, as well as non-visual and non-aural modes of perception.

The performance begins with groups of visitors preparing for a journey. Entering the installation, they find themselves enveloped in a light mist, suspended on nets floating in 450,000 cubic feet of air. With the stage set, a concert for the air and spider/webs begins as the atmosphere becomes foggier, as if particles of black carbon PM2.5 were filling the space between participants and a spider/web. While the lights dim, the nets shake with recorded sound waves produced by spiders interacting with their webs. Many of the works in the exhibition are included in part in the installation, for example in the recordings of spider/webs from Webs of At-tent(s)ion in the Level 2 Gallery, creating an ensemble out of the individual pieces of Particular Matter(s).

For participants, space within the installation seems to enlarge much like it does in the expanding universe as the spiders’ unheard voices become felt vibrations. In Free the Air: How to hear the universe in a spider/web, a concert in four movements, vibration offers participants the chance to connect across time, space, and species. As different chords and strings are plucked, the participant’s entire body becomes an ear, perceptive to the net reverberating beneath it and to the rhythms of other beings. The concert culminates in a moment of attunement to spider diviners who, situated for centuries beyond the Capitalocene, have valued knowledge gleaned from interspecies communication with spider/webs. Formed out of this entanglement of scales—from the cosmic to the arachnid and the microscopic—a new togetherness emerges, inspiring hope for the future.

Artwork Credits

The Arachnophilia community’s Spider/Web Archive of vibrations was recorded at Studio Tomás Saraceno. Thanks to the Arachnophilia community, among them Peter Jäger of Senckenberg Museum, Alex Jordan of Max Planck Institute, Markus Bühler of MIT, Ally Bisshop, and Peggy S. M. Hill. Thanks to Bollo Pierre Tadios for the generosity in sharing his knowledge and practice of spider divination in Cameroon, David Zeitlyn for his research, and Lugh O’Neill for his support in the sound compositions and spatial sound design. Endless gratitude to Studio Tomás Saraceno and the whole team that made this artwork possible.

Thanks to the entire technical team that supported the development of the particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) motion sonification technology.

For their work in engineering, production, and installation, thanks to Stev Bringmann, Sergio Leiva, Juan Enrique Leiva, and Will Lauf, as well as Michael Wörner and his team. For lightning and atmospheric design support, thanks to Christof Hetzer, Alex Brok, Ulrich Reiter, and Rembrandt Pieplenbosch. Thank you also to Jesse Hamerman, The Shed’s Director of Exhibitions, and his colleagues.

Thanks to the BerlInklusion, Seilschaft, and Sozialpädagogisches Institut Gütersloh e.V. Grenzenlos communities whose sensitivity, expertise, and collaboration alongside the Studio and Shed teams made this artwork accessible for many. And endless gratitude to Studio Tomás Saraceno and the whole team that made this artwork possible.

Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles; Neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Andersen’s, Copenhagen; Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires; and Pinksummer Contemporary Art, Genoa

The Covid-19 pandemic has further exacerbated connections between racial inequality, public health, and environmental health in the United States, as cases and deaths in communities of color significantly exceed those in white communities. As a respiratory illness, Covid-19 more severely affects those whose lungs and immune systems have already been compromised by pre-existing conditions resulting from systemic racism in the forms of exposure to toxic air pollution, blocked access to healthcare, and geographic segregation, among other inequities. In two conversations about the long-term, disproportionate effects of pollution on communities of color, artist Tomás Saraceno first invites science journalist Harriet A. Washington to join him in discussion before convening a group of activists to reflect on the severity of Covid-19’s unequal impact in the US. For more than a decade, Saraceno has been imagining more equitable modes of existence with the environment, creating floating sculptures, community projects, and interactive installations that propose a sensory solidarity with the planet and nonhuman beings.

In 2018, Saraceno exhibited Calendrier Lun-Air de Paris, a work consisting of filter paper strips—collected from Airparif, an organization responsible for monitoring air quality in the Paris region—that capture hourly samples of the toxic particles we breathe in, resulting in a series of dots ranging from gray (indicating light pollution) to black (heavy pollution). Inspired by Harriet A. Washington’s reporting on environmental justice issues in her book A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind (2019), Saraceno created his next iteration, titled We Do Not All Breathe the Same Air (2020 – 22). The work presents a visualization of air quality data from across the United States to demonstrate the uneven distribution of particulate matter, or microscopic air pollution. In a first conversation, Saraceno and Washington will discuss this artwork, its historical context and causes, and what can be done to effect change in our communities and environment. A follow-up panel discussion—moderated by Bronx-based urban designer Oscar Oliver-Didier and including the voices of New York City activists Mychal Johnson, a co-founding member of South Bronx Unite, and Leslie Velasquez, an environmental justice coordinator for El Puente—takes these questions further.