Marking Breath 26-3-2020

Sunrise 5.55- sunset 18.36 Curated by Therese Maria Gram at Vennepunkt. Cph.

In the light of the previous months’ global events and recent weeks and days of intensification, where we are all challenged in our usual actions and in our everyday, you are invited to participate in Sophie Dupont’s performance Marking Breath, in the safety of your home or wherever you may be located.

During March 26th, from sunrise to sunset, Sophie Dupont will mark every one of her breaths on a copper plate. The work will be a record of this exact day and will be a celebration of what we all have in common: life and breath. As a tribute to those who have lost their lives and those affected in every way imaginable, Sophie Dupont will sit alone in silence and mark her breath all day long. For the first time, this performance, previously performed in Mexico, USA, Guatamala, Costa Rica, Norway, England, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and in Sweden, will be live streamed over YouTube. We invite you to join and if so desired turning your cameras towards yourself and film your own markings of breath, in silence, on whatever material available. You can send the footage to us and we will post it on youtube as a global celebration of this day where we all drew our breaths, celebrated existence and joined together as a community.

Text & Photo by Therese Maria Gram

The Mind Marking Breath

Sunrise 5.55. Livestream from Copenhagen

It’s strange times

The virus has shot down the entire world

We cannot be close to each other anymore

We livestream into people’s home

#stayhome is the most popular hashtag now

One participant

Breathing

The virus attacks the breathing function and the lungs. Has killed tons of people all over the world

I breath and I mark

This time I make a musical score

I imagine the music the tones the rhythm

I look up and I see myself being livestreamed into the YouTube channel

I miss people around me

Real people real life

The waking up of a city

The world is on pause but we need to still breathe

No pause for the breath

Im alone and yet Im not

3 people follow me

I imagine some of my friends and I smile

It’s a bit more difficult to mark the score but so interesting – I think of cuneiform

Therese is checking the technology- all is working fine

I tap into foreverness and disappear in breathing

No choices to be made no action to do

Only marking my breathing

I feel a bit tense

The situation of the world is stressful in peculiar ways

The not knowing

The threat of other people

I mark

Breathing into the copper conducting music

Abstract

Connecting the vertical reality with the horizontal

Performing this work, I always ask myself if Im ready to die

I am

Death has been my companion since I lost my mother. I was 21.

Life death

It’s so strange

Awake sleep

Not the same

Life wants to live

So often we forget

Get caught up in our minds of difficulties and worries

My best friend would say; do I know? I invented this.

I think of stars – the universe

Expanding space

Looking from above from far away both in time and space

Back to my marking

Inhalation exhalation

Im a bit cold and I breath extra slow

It helps

Looking into the screen I imagine I see people maybe some are marking with me

Marking music, I begin humming

Its calming

Time stands still

We have plenty of time

Sun shines outside

I imagine that I go into the sun

Back to my marking

Music

I get terrible impatient

I feel like Plato in the grotto

Looking into the screen

It’s a bit like only a shadow of reality

This work – I think for a moment

Is the worst idea ever

I start humming again

Get hypnotised and wake up when Therese enters the room

2 meters distance

We all have to keep this because of the virus

Will this new reality ever come to an end?

It feels like a remote dream to be able to move freely

1 or 2 months ago is so hard to remember

Like we were other humans in another life

I relax into the new condition

Focusing on inhalation and exhalation

We all have a certain number of breaths

But we don’t know

The most significant important things in life we don’t know

Maybe we even don’t know the non-significant non-important things

But we fool ourselves to believe we do know

Or maybe it’s just me

People leave comments next to the livestream

I feel the present of others

It gives me new energy

I mark Humming smiling

18.34 sun has set