The Taxonomy of Breathing, a Collaboration with IceBox Collective

The Taxonomy of Breathing is a socially conscious, multidisciplinary art project that processes trauma by mapping recent world events using the connective lens of breath, created by a group of artists known at The IceBox Collective. Who are we and what do we do? IceBox Collective fosters critical thought and dialogue across cultural boundaries through art. Using a dynamic, open-ended approach to explore a wide range of creative strategies, IceBox offers a platform for collaboration that encourages empathy, ideas and relationships. This multimodal artist group (Courtney Applequist, painting/drawing, Edgar Endress, new media/video, Gina Biver, electroacoustic music composition and sound design, Reed Griffith, new media, and Jeremy Thomas Kunkel, interdisciplinary sculpture) coalesces their various disciplines into a collaborative art practice that promotes dialogue rather than statements.Visit us here.

Gasp (2021) for choir and fixed media

Created for The Taxonomy of Breathing project by IceBox Collective, Gasp is an electroacoustic music work by composer Gina Biver, commissioned and inspired by artist Edgar Endress. Incorporated within the piece are live stethoscope recordings Biver made from visiting communities in the US: the breathing of a firefighter, public school teacher, psychologist, opera singer, nurse-midwife, artist, plus recordings of people who lost their homes in the California wildfires, these breaths and sighs demand the question of how the pandemic, the wildfires, BLM’s fight for freedom, liberation and justice, the smothering effects of poverty and the divisive politics of fear have altered and affected the breathing of those who have lived it.

Audio portraits of breaths snatched from the spaces between words in a debate between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X show what lies hidden in unspoken moments, the breath as a mirror to the soul. For while MLK’s breaths are peaceful, calm, and slow like the ocean; Malcolm X’s are all power and fire --  sudden gasps in between each word that force and thrust his ideas forward into the world. Two important figures who were consistently called upon during our current but agonizingly longtime struggle against racism and hatred.

The collected breaths — here acting as an archive of the moments within this capsule of time — are what connects us all, for we live with these breaths or die without them. They burn, strain and struggle for us, drown us as we gasp for air. They also have the power to bring life; they heal, balance, and purify. With their exhale they allow a letting-go and a release of pain, and of thoughts and ideas that no longer serve us. Breathing, in this way, manifests not only our fragility, our environment within this moment in history; but our ability to recover, heal and go forth.

An ancient hymn sings of the river that will wash away our sins before we die or before we can live, and becomes the backdrop to this cacophony of breaths and cries. Evidence of the heart-wrenching pleas of the forsaken bystanders at George Floyd’s murder; his own cries for help; and the anguished folks who lost homes in the fires, all ring out. Sounds of breathing through an oxygen mask, the sputtering racket of ventilators like those that occupied our thoughts at the beginning of the pandemic and even the squeaky sounds of a newborn are all there, representing, and this mass of interconnectedness, this communion -- the effects of which have rippled far beyond 2020 -- is codified and captured in the wideness of our collective action of breathing.

Concert for the Trees (2022) for soprano and baritone voices, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, bass and piano (5:33) 

Performed in the woods of Virginia’s Appalachian mountains by Fuse Ensemble, Gina Biver’s Concert for the Trees was composed and filmed for DC-based IceBox Collective as part of the Taxonomy of Breathing, a project that looks to investigate our current societal moment through the lens of breath. Concert for the Trees brings forth the notion of our communion with nature and the gift of breath that is evident and fundamental to our very existence, but often ignored. In the piece, the musicians are essentially breathing along with the forest – mirroring the 5-½ times per minute the average human will breathe. The composition employs “chords of nature,” a theory that roots harmony in the natural, physical elements of music. Deep, low tones then evolve into effervescent and sparkling moments as the oxygen dissipates through the leaves and into the air. Here, Appalachian fiddle chords bounce along -- a nod to the mountain range the musicians are on and the music created there more than a century ago. Congruence is the natural state of being, and as with breathing, the cycle then returns.

Video Performance Notes:

Music composed and conducted by Gina Biver. Performed by Fuse Ensemble: Yana Nikol, flute, Angela Murakami clarinet, Greg HIser, violin, Pam Clem, cell, Ethan Foote, bass, Ina Mirtcheva Blevins, piano. Special guests: Danielle Krause, soprano, Davide Damiani, baritone. 

Video by Steven Biver, with Cesar Painemilla/camera, Cecilia Nguyen/production assistant, Gina Biver/costumes, audio recording, and  Erdem Helvacioglu/audio mastering. Special thanks to Jeremy Thomas Kunkel, Edgar Endress and Courtney Applequist of IceBox Collective for their support in this creative endeavor. CLICK HERE TO WATCH.

Drawing on repurposed cardboard & paper sculpture by Courtney Applequist https://courtneyapplequist.com/

Change-Makers, The King of the Mind, and the Shared Experience of The Breath (2021)

Change-Makers, The King of the Mind, and the Shared Experience of The Breath (2021) is an electronic work by Gina Biver as part of the Taxonomy of Breathing by IceBox Collective. It was created to coincide with the opening of Courtney Applequist’s show Moment of Interrogation (10.1.21) at Foundry Gallery in Washington, DC. 

In this new work, we hear the breaths of young change-makers such as Greta Thunberg, the recorded wisdom of BKS Iyengar in his discussion and demonstration of pranayama (inhale, hold, exhale), as well as yogic breathing techniques that lead to integration of the mind and body. Included, also, are the captured breaths of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, of teachers and firefighters and community members as in Breathing Portraits (above). Within the composition’s three distinct sections we are led to explore that “take a deep breath” moment before we manifest change; to acknowledge that the breath, indeed, is the “king of the mind,” and in the last section — where we find the multitudes breathing at once — we are united, fundamentally, within our collective minds and living bodies — by the very process of breathing.