Vienna based writer, artist, and researcher Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński presents a new work produced for Liverpool Biennial at FACT. The work entitled ‘Respire (Liverpool)’ (2023) references the precarity of Black breathing and proposes breath as a means of individual and collective liberation. Accompanied by ‘Keep On Keepin’ On (for Nile)’ (2023), a soundscape created in collaboration with sound-artist Bassano Bonelli Bassano, this video work is committed to giving space to Black breathing to expand and exist freely. Dedicating the exhibition space to this expansion, Kazeem-Kaminski’s presents a multimedia-based and hauntingly visceral experience in which the sound moves in waves from the individual to the communal and back again. By positioning breath as a somatic response to violence but also to pleasure and connection, the works investigate breath as a compass to guide along the precarious line between catastrophe and aliveness. Filmed here in Liverpool with local participants, ‘Respire (Liverpool)’ explores the possibilities to breathe freely despite the burden of an ongoing past. Together, the performers share, hold and imagine breathing space for each other, themselves and others, blurring lines between past, present and future.

Find out more at https://www.biennial.com/artists/belinda-kazeem-kaminski/