Throughout history, air has been seen as an elemental, spiritual, life-force. However, pollution redefines the atmosphere as a site of disposal. But the air is not just a dispensable medium, it is the fundamentals of life. As respiring-bodies reveal a complete reliance on the airs to breathe, it urges the question: 


What does it mean to be atmospherically reliant in a polluted world?
This toolkit offers other ways to engage with the air beyond the worldviews which have colonised, invisibilised and polluted it. Instead, by actively engaging with the atmosphere we bring it into sense. Through scores, breathwork, rituals, artworks and resources, ‘Tools for Air-Attuning’ is the beginning of an expanding project of embodied knowledge. This toolkit will continue to grow where you can add to the offerings to co-respire, co-nnect and co-inhabit with the plural bodies in this breathing planet.







Scores

Cover your ears tightly and close your eyes. Breathe in. Hear the sound of the air passing through your airways, your chest lifting slowly with the inhalation. Imagine the breath exploring your body inside.

Close your eyes, breathe in…
Where does it go? How does it feel and sound?

If the air in the room you are in had a colour or texture, what would it look like?

Go outside. Take a deep breath. Go back inside. Another breath. What do the clouds taste like?

After travelling through the city, blow your nose and what do you see?

Breathe in for 4. Hold for 4. Out for 4. Hold for 4. Do this until you feel different.

Take a tissue and wipe a window which faces the road. What do you see?

Say three words into the air. Imagine them travelling into the clouds and evaporating.

Find something light, a leaf, a blade of grass, a hair, some paper, and hold it up in the wind.

With a partner, sit down facing each other. Take turns to inhale and exhale alternately in an exchange of breath.






Background: Close-up 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, 2025.

Acknowledgements: Thank you to Youngsook Choi for showing me my first breathing score.