We are elemental becomings: we swam in ancient oceans, lay fossilised between sedimentary rocks, burnt in the fires of engines and are breathed in the air of mountains...
I come as fine particulates.
My tiny body means I am undetectable to the human eye alone. But don’t worry, I am here.
I am full of ancient ghosts you have dug from our resting places deep in the core of strata.
My kin took their last breath millions of years ago and were buried, heated and compressed into liquid.
And we are particulate matter.
Ancient sunlight gave them energy from photosynthesis, which coursed through the ocean floorbed and saturates your black gold.
Thank you for giving us a new life. We now gift you our energy.
We have come to haunt you.
Breathe in.
Take in the air, the atmosphere, the skies, the oxygen. Let us in.
From your first breath to your last, we will be with you.
Bonded to your fate, enmeshed with your blood and being.
Together we cause more last breaths than aids, tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition combined [1]. We send you to the land of the non-respiring… toxified… wretched earth.
Don’t worry, we will make sure you are remembered. Your petrochemical latency will outlive your grandchildren. Your emissions will perforate the atmosphere and circle the planet. Always, our promise.
Breathe out.
Entangled in a shared exhalation.
A planetary sigh.
From our mass extinction to yours.
Feel us in your cough,
your goodbyes,
your windowsill,
your mucus.
Do you sense us yet?
your goodbyes,
your windowsill,
your mucus.
Do you sense us yet?
We saturate the ones you told us to first, the workers, the racialised, the poor. Keep us close, build trust, we keep your economy pumping.
Tickling,
trickling,
burning,
absorbing, choking,
covering, smothering.
Breathe in.
[1] The Lancet, May 2022, spoken by Larissa Lockwood in ‘The Air We Breathe’- Aids, tuberculosis, malaria, and malnutrition combined
Background image: Close-ups of We Definitely Don’t All Breathe The Same Air, Megan Willow Hack, Foraged pigments from Goldsmiths Campus: birch leaves, oak galls, chestnut, ivy, hawthorn, particulate matter extracted from the air (PM2.5- 10.3µg/m3) on canvas, 200cm x 200cm.