Ex.A.R.U.

The Ex.A.R.U. (Exo Auxiliary Respiratory Unit) project involves a monoculture greenhouse (with broad-leaved aglaonema and alocasia plants) around which an experiential situation of controlled breathing takes place, necessary to maintain human functions in extreme environments where air is absent, scarce or unsuitable for inhalation. In outer space, which is at the core of the artist’s interest, this speculative situation appears as an imaginary landscape that can provide the means to think the survival of humans, who are physiologically determined by the atmospheric substrate of their home planet. In the imaginary dramaturgy, the greenhouse is conceived as one of many units planted with vegetation optimised for maximum oxygen production and equipped with sensors and watering systems that extract water and nutrients for plant nutrition from human urine and act as life-support systems for the survival of the human body in an airless environment. In Ex.A.R.U., breathing air, which on planet Earth is taken for granted, becomes via the experience of momentary asphyxia the ultimate edge where visitors can put on a breathing mask connected to the dome and thereby experience and internalise the elemental necessity, as well as ephemerality, of the thin layer of air that envelops all life on Earth.