A Tribute to Breathing

Photograph by Cassidy Schoenfelder, Sophie’s funeral for biodiversity (cleansing), Selway River, Idaho, Summer 2019.

Migration and movement occur at microscopic levels.

Consider the way the new coronavirus, referred to as “COVID-19” by the World Health Organization following their February 11, 2020 announcement, moves and migrates through bodies across the globe. This virus spill-over from nonhuman to human that was first identified in Wuhan, China and over time caused a viral pandemic. The coronavirus migrated between human and human and human; killing some and simply passing through others with few symptoms or none at all. According to Google News, COVID-19 has created a total of 76,126,165 cases as of December 19, 2020 and doubling with roughly 163,000,000 as of May 16, 2021; I have friends and family who have been among the many to survive it and some who did not and may not. 

Another viral phenomenon parallel to COVID-19 took the form of a video. On May 25, 2020, a 46 year-old African-American man spoke his last words, “I can’t breathe.” George Floyd’s arrest was recorded by a 17 year-old witness named Darnella Frazier and went viral. The murder caused by the Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, who used his knee to pin Floyd to the ground by his neck, initiated protests the following day throughout Minneapolis and followed in other cities across the nation. In the following days, my Minneapolis apartment reverberated with the sounds of sirens and chanting as protestors went to the streets. Bodies walking side by side and chanting together through masked mouths. I walked through the boarded-up commercial district of Uptown in Minneapolis smelling fresh paint. Murals for the dead and dying: “Rest in Power.” Murals for the growing list of victims of police brutality: “RIP Floyd” and “Say Their Names.” Justice-seeking initiatives and interventions from the 2013-born political movement, Black Lives Matter, migrate and move from the mouths of those who can speak in order to tell the stories of those no longer alive to speak for themselves.

Weeks later, following the early months of the virus that takes away one’s ability to breathe and after a Black man in Minneapolis was forced to take his final breath, the air quality in California, Oregon, and Washington was decimated by the millions of acres burning in the early fall; locals described that inhaling for a moment felt like swallowing the charred limbs of a thousand trees. Under orange skies, millions of beings were left fighting to breathe. Even beings without lungs— the rivers, the grasses, the molds beneath the grasses— were suffocated. 

The year 2020 created an entangled, embodied, and submerged narrative, a year that I refer to as A Tribute to Breathing. 

Under masks, bodies, and smoke we fight to breathe, underwater is where we seem to be.

So many are left breathless. Fires have gone into hibernation. Equal-rights advocacy battles still glow like hot embers. The COVID-19 virus rages onwards, depriving millions of oxygen. All are abundant pockets of human and nonhuman bodies colliding alarmingly in locations both place-based and placeless. Yes. These are collisions. When the smoke clears enough to inhale something other than fire, what is made visible amongst all the collisions described here are collaborations. 

I see collaborations as the initiators of collisions and collisions as the initiators of collaborations.

Collaborations can be messy, violent, peaceful, and introspective. No matter the multiplicity within collaboration I see elements of slowness, empathy, active and responsive listening, and reciprocity and I intend to use this manifesto as a means to advocate for further usage of these methods. A manifesto for treading water- for slow and steady breaths.

I advocate for slowness and reflection. There is privilege in reflection. Particularly during this moment in time, reflection may seem out of reach to those who are merely surviving the Tribute to Breathing era. This manifesto encourages its readers to determine for themselves a definition of collaboration and what it looks like, in relationship to COVID-19, the murder of George Floyd, and Western wildfires. Reflection and its partner methods will be necessary for sustaining survival and sustaining the collaborative efforts produced.

Collaboration and slowness were made known to me during an artist residency through Signal Fire, when I connected my identities as an artist, art historian, and as an Indigenous woman. In 2019, the Portland, Oregon-based arts organization called Signal Fire chose the programming theme “Navigate Together,” to focus on critical issues surrounding migration, fire ecology, and the challenges associated with climate change adaptation. During one of the four-week backpacking artist residencies offered by Signal Fire from July 14-August 10, 2019, eight artists, myself included, and two guides, traveled into the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon, the Selway River in Idaho, the Bitterroot Mountains in Montana, and the Methow Valley in Washington; the traditional homelands of many: the Cascades home to the Chinook, Wasco, Kalapuya, Yakama, Molalla, Sahaptan, and Klamath, among others; the Klamath-Siskiyous region home to the Klamath, Wintu, Karok, Hupa, Yurok, Yahooskin, Shasta, Takelma, and Tolowa among others; the Pacific Northwest Rockies Sub-Ranges homelands to the Nez Perce, Cayuse, Walla Walla, Umatilla, Bitterroot Salish, Kalispell, and Coeur d’Alene. As a small, nomadic community, we considered specific questions slowly, and many more like it, while walking through these geographies. 

While in Idaho’s Selway/Bitterroot Wilderness, Sophie Henry, who was also referred to by her trail-name, Sopha, performed a funeral for biodiversity followed by an act of grieving through river-bathing. In her performance, she led us across the rocks near camp and onto the hot sand bordering the Selway River. Sopha crafted relic-like objects that intertwined bones and plants. The bones belonged to unknown animals and the assemblage of plants appeared to be green and lively, stiff and shriveled— golden remnants of what used to be. As we approached, each relic lay resting in a small pre-dug hole. She buried the objects slowly as we watched, and then set pebbles atop their graves to mark their final resting place. After the burials, Sopha turned to face the river and began removing her clothing: kneeling to untie her hiking boots, removing her blue baseball cap, coral red tank top, and then finally her black shorts. Stepping into the river and sitting down facing away from the group, she filled her hands with rocks and sand, rubbing the sediment gently over her body. She did this slowly and intentionally, watching the sand stick to her wet skin as her fingers grazed over it. In a final gesture, Sopha leaned back to submerge herself fully in the river. For a brief moment, the current carried her downstream and she held her breath. She resurfaced a moment later and returned to the beach to get dressed. 

With performance, she is able to articulate her grief through the movement of her body, physically connecting to the place around her. She explained that her ephemeral performance “allows the viewer to access it from different angles” and also “open[s] to a nonhuman place.” For Sopha, grieving is an emotional act that can be felt by human and nonhuman beings and I feel that her belief is applicable to the pandemics referred to in this essay. The Tribute to Breathing narrative is saturated with grief. Sopha associates her grief with water in a way that feels less like treading water and more like floating with the current; collaboration. 

Signal Fire asked their artists-in-residence like Sopha to consider “How does migration build empathy and interspecies connections? What can it teach us about adaptability and resilience in the age of climate change? How can artists strengthen routes of migration and support transitory populations?” Signal Fire’s prompts encourage collaboration, particularly when one considers how their body might be in relation to another body or being. Sopha entered these inquiries through the reflective act of grieving and the healing space of water.

These inquiries are valuable for sustaining positive cycles of collaboration and collision. For example, if I rewrite the questions originally prompted by Signal Fire to more broadly consider the pandemics and their relations described in this essay, can such inquiries keep us treading water for a while longer and maybe let the current carry us?

How does migration/movement build empathy and interracial/interspecies connections? What can it teach people about adaptability and resilience in the age of a global pandemic, seemingly endless racial and ethnic equality battles, and ever-increasing symptoms of climate change? How can artists/people/beings collaborate instead of collide? Can collision be a form of collaboration? 

By Cassidy R. Schoenfelder, or Poppy