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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. Add to the offerings below to co-respire, co-nnect and co-inhabit with the plural bodies in this breathing planet...
This toolkit is an expanding project about attuning to the airs around us. Please leave your ideas below to add to the resources…
Resources
Adey, P., 2014. Air: Nature and Culture. 1 ed. London: Reaktion Books.
Adoo-Kiss-Debrah, R., 2021. Wellcome Collection. [Online]
Available at: https://wellcomecollection.org/in-the-air-gallery-captions
[Accessed 20 July 2025].
Alaimo, S., 2010. Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Alaimo, S., 2016. Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Alaimo, S., 2020. Transcorporeality: An Interview with Stacy Alaimo [Interview] (20 September 2020).
Alaimo, S., 2022. Deep Cuts, Chemicals, and Climate: an Interview with Stacy Alaimo on Transcorporeality [Interview] (Winter 2022).
Allen, I. K., 2020. Thinking with a Feminist Political Ecology of Air-and-breathing-bodies. Body and Science, 26(2), pp. 1-27.
Ardill, D. T., 2024. A WORLD OF CARE: Turner and the Environment Exhibition and Climate Action Guide. [Online]
Available at: https://www.tottenhamclouds.org.uk/uploads/5/6/9/4/56947305/woc_exhibition_and_climate_action_guide_final.pdf
[Accessed 26 August 2025].
Balkin, A., 2013. The Atmosphere: A Guide. [Online]
Available at: https://www.amybalkin.com/work-1/atmosphereguide
[Accessed 31 August 2025].
Calvillo, N., 2023. Aeropolis: Queering Air in Toxicpolluted Worlds. New York: Columbia University.
Calvillo, N. & Garnett, E., 2019. Data intimacies: Building infrastructures for intensified embodied encounters with air pollution. The Sociological Review Monographs, 67(2), pp. 340-356.
Carson, R., 1907-1962. Silent Spring. 40th anniversary edition, 1st Mariner Books edition ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Choy, T. & Zee, J., 2015. CONDITION—SUSPENSION. Cultural Anthropology, 30(2), pp. 210-223.
Clean Air Fund, n.d. Society and Air Pollution. [Online]
Available at: https://www.cleanairfund.org/theme/inequality/
[Accessed 4 August 2025].
Connor, S., 2010. The Matter of Air: Science and Art of the Ethereal. London: Reaktion Books Ltd.
Davies, T., 2018. Toxic Space and Time: Slow Violence, Necropolitics, and Petrochemical Pollution. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(6), pp. 1537-1553.
Davis, H., 2022. Plastic Matter. s.l.:Duke University Press.
Dickinson, E., 1892. Poems By Emily Dickinson. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
Ella Roberta Family Foundation, 2022. Invisible Dust. [Online]
Available at: https://invisibledust.com/projects/breathe-2022/
[Accessed 1 September 2025].
Engelmann, S., 2022. Sensing Art in The Atmosphere: Elemental Lures and Aerosolar Practices. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Goodwin, D., 2022. Invisible Dust. [Online]
Available at: https://invisibledust.com/projects/breathe-2022/
[Accessed 1 September 2025].
Hildyard, D., 2017. The Second Body. 7th ed. London: Fitzcarraldo Editions.
International Indian Treaty Council, 2012. Environmental Health. [Online]
Available at: https://www.iitc.org/wp-content/uploads/Indigenous-Women-and-Environment-PaperFINALEGMSUBMISSIONJan182012rev1_web.pdf
[Accessed 11 August 2025]..
Lafarge, D., 2022. The Ambivalence of Air. [Online]
Available at: https://wellcomecollection.org/stories/the-ambivalence-of-air
[Accessed 22 June 2025].
Liboiron, M., 2021. Pollution is Colonialism. s.l.:Duke University Press.
Menzies, A. K. et al., 2024. Sharing Indigenous values, practices and priorities as guidance for transforming human–environment relationships. People and Nature, 6(5), pp. 1713-2173.
Murphy, M., 2017. ALTERLIFE AND DECOLONIAL CHEMICAL RELATIONS. Cultural Anthropology, 32(4), pp. 494-503.
Null School, 2025. earth. [Online]
Available at: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=-5.77,51.80,1588
[Accessed 1 September 2025].
Open Weather Community, 2025. Year of Weather: Collective Map. [Online]
Available at: https://open-weather.community/yow/map/
[Accessed 1 September 2025].
Owens, J., 2023. Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.
Shapiro, N., 2015. ATTUNING TO THE CHEMOSPHERE: Domestic Formaldehyde, Bodily Reasoning, and the Chemical Sublime. Cultural Anthropology, 30(3), pp. 359-524.
The Ella Roberta Foundation, n.d. ELLA'S LIFE AND HER LEGACY. [Online]
Available at: https://www.ellaroberta.org/about-ella
[Accessed 7 August 2025].
Tuana, N., 2007. Vicous Porosity: Witnessing Hurricane Katrina. In: S. Alaimo & S. Hekman, eds. Material Feminisms. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, pp. 188-213.
University College London, 2021. Fossil fuel air pollution responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide. [Online]
Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/feb/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-responsible-1-5-deaths-worldwide
[Accessed 29 August 2025].
World Health Organization, n.d. Air Pollution. [Online]
Available at: https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1
[Accessed 15th August 2025].
Wright, W. J., 2021. As Above, So Below: Anti-Black Violence as Environmental Racism. Antipode, 53(3), pp. 791-809.
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. 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.