Over the last year, artists Youngsook Choi and Sophie Seita have been collaboratively developing scores for movement, gesture, sound-making, and listening, in relation to the eco-intelligence of more-than-human species. As part of this long-term exploration, their participatory performance ‘Scales of Breathing’ stages experimental breathing gestures that imagine interspecies collaboration, inspired by the earthworm's soil work with microbial species and its strategic diapause (suspended engagement) when the soil environment is malnourishing.

Joining forces with choreographer Jaelee Kim and sound artist & poet Rike Scheffler, the first performance was well received at the Seoul Museum of Art, curated by Sungmin Lim last November, and the next iteration will be presented at LADA.

Under the overarching ethics of decolonial and queer ecology, this participatory performance forges new embodied sensibilities in cooperation and reciprocity. It is materialised through composting gestures, poetic instructions, sound and rhythm, light sensitivity, humidity, active pauses, and collective enquiries, developing what the artists frame as ‘eco-literacy’.

*Original commission by Seoul Museum of Art, Korea, with additional support from Goethe Institute and Goldsmiths University of London.