To harness the breath, by André Fortino

André Fortino’s conference
Tuesday, February 10, 2026 at 5:30 pm
Stein Room

Beyond its purely physiological function, breath (which consists in expelling air through the mouth or nose by a voluntary action, unlike the reflex act of breathing) occupies a decisive place in performative practices. If the body’s presence is necessarily tied to the physiological necessity of breathing, I consider that it is only when breathing becomes breath that the performer truly enters into connection with his or her practice. And this breath occurs at the moment when the individual, consciously or unconsciously, engages his or her breath.

Whether in ancestral ritual practices, in sport, in certain artistic forms or social practices, when human beings engage their breath, they set up the conditions for emancipation phenomena. Emancipation in the sense of a process of political, individual and collective liberation.

This workshop is an invitation to engage one’s breath through performative propositions. After some research and observation to try and understand where breath lies and how humans use it, you’ll invent and experiment with breath practices in performance, with the aim of making a video. In this workshop, we’ll also be thinking about ways of bringing video and performance into dialogue.

André Fortino was born in Marseille in 1977, where he lives and works. He obtained a DNSEP from ESAAA in 2008, and has recently completed a research project entitled: Engager le souffle. Du Theyyam au Black Bloc, la performance en feu at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
His artistic practice crosses many mediums, most notably video, performance in various configurations, painting and installation.
He has enjoyed significant visibility in France thanks, among other things, to the Rendez-vous 2012 exhibition at the IAC during the Lyon Biennale, and internationally with the solo exhibition Hôtel Formes Sauvages at the Darling Foundry in Montreal in 2015. In October 2019, he staged a solo exhibition entitled Nuit Flamme at FRAC SUD and a performance, Pleine Lune, for the ACTORAL festival in Marseille. More recently, he wrote and performed Les enfants ont les dents diagonales for the international contemporary art fair Art-o-rama 2023 and the Journiac Days 2024 at Galerie Michel Journiac. In 2025, he presented a performance entitled L’ivresse du limoncello at the Fondation Pernod Ricard.

Photo credit: André fortino & Stéphane Guglielmet