Journal of breath

Qixin Zhang, 2022, mixed media – audio, paper drawing

My project is aiming at capturing different breath patterns, by putting myself in different scenarios, in which I’m revealing my mysterious life.

Breath of sweet sleep, the breath of anxiety, the breath of talking to someone you have a crush on, or even the breath of making love? Every moment of breathing is a different pattern, a different physical experience, a time experience, and an emotional experience. Your breath is leading you, ahead of your judgment, it is essential, it keeps you alive.

I brought zoom recorder H6 with me every day everywhere I go. It represents my ordinary daily life, and also shows my tendency of looking for drama and performative/ritual experiences.

To add visual elements, for each piece I made a drawing to go along with. They represent the experience in another way.

The challenge is – to be at the moment and also out of the moment – remind me to connect the device and start the action of recording. Sometimes Iwas so immersive in my emotion that miss the chance to record. Also, it’s this setup don’t allow me to record my breath during big movement. But it seemed easier than expected that the audio quality is quite nice.

The opportunity remains is that I want to use this medium to augment storytelling. There’s a way to make myself into a character, live my life as a performance art, in which has some predesign scenario and at the same time unknown. Secondly, I’m interested in instrument performer’s body movement, breath, the music that they make out of movement & the music they hear, at the moment when they perform they forget themselves.