Within Bated Breath: Waiting for the Pause

As a media artist, I think along the familiar occurrences of Black breathing as a site of community but also exploration. I utilize readings of Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake and Ashon Crawley’s Blackpentecostal Breath to explore communication in space and visuality. Viral is the continued, sonic demand to announce a Black life breathing. The force to enunciate a regular bodily function, a consequence of its ultimate disrespect. In this text, the enunciated breath of Black disembodied existence moves haggard and disaggregated. In this article, I examine the annunciation of Black subjectivity, the use of Black breath in creative and political space. As it acts as respite, invoked as a communal force. As observed in the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, the haunting words “I Can’t Breathe” formed to become a cry, a global opening to exclaim and frustrate silence, and to push forward recognizing Black lives as finally human.