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Short abstract:

[re]capture is an art-science research based on workshops, exhibitions, and field work aimed at rematerializing polluted urban air within alternative technological and biological systems. The paper explores its resulting collective reflection and actions toward air’s post-fossil future.

Long abstract:

In the current context of ecological emergency, air points to increasingly critical forms of corporeal experiences (Sutton 2021) and emphasizes the precarious boundaries between the living and fossil activities. While atmospheric pollution is a pervasive materiality that affects “some places and bodies differently than others” and has “an immediate effect on social realities” (Nieuwenhuis 2016 505), it raises social and political questions pertaining to healthy environments (Chen 2011; Graham 2015; Liboiron 2021). What kind of artistic interventions can contribute to speculating new post-fossil futures for urban air? How to reframe air’s “contamination vis-à-vis forms of knowledge and doing that encompass the experiential as well as figurative meanings?” (Albano 2022 30). This paper discusses the research process of [re]capture, a site-specific work composed of a gallery installation and a series of outdoor DIY instruments that capture atmospheric data. Intersecting critical and biodesign, mechanical engineering, and environmental science, the research examines how pollution was constituted and normalized in at-risk neighborhoods bordering the Montreal Metropolitan Expressway (Canada), and bids on the concept of ‘filtration’ to rematerialize air within systems of biomaterials, dust, light, and winds. The work emerged from a series of community workshops (2023), a residency (2022), a public exhibition (2024), and a comparative study of scientific air monitoring instruments. Using 'filtration' as an operative concept for interfacing materials, technologies, cities, and researchers around questions of air quality and affectivity, the paper explores how this process provides opportunities for collective reflection and action toward a post-fossil future.

Video: https://vimeo.com/743974327