Pneuma: an ancient Greek word for both “breath” and “spirit” – invites us to reflect on what it means to inhabit a world where our lives are inseparable from the vast ecological forces that sustain us.

It is time to listen to the animal rhythms that move beneath our language, beneath thought, beneath the surface of our day to day activities. Pneuma draws us into the quiet reciprocity between body and world, between breath and tide. Inhalation and exhalation is what sustains life, while also facilitating a continuous exchange between our internal selves and the shared, external world. In this sculptural environment, visitors are invited to feel the body not as fixed or self-contained, but as an open, porous system–entangled with waters and winds that move through it.

(2025)

The creatures in Pneuma inflate and deflate to the ebb and flow of the Waddenzee’s tides, and resonate in response to visitors bodily ebb and flow of breath. In this interplay, Pneuma invites us into an attentive presence with the in-common and interdependent rhythms of human and more-than-human life. By linking breath and tide, Pneuma gently reminds us: everything breathes. Everything moves. Life unfolds not in isolation, but in relation—with others, with the earth, in a polyphony of pulses. To breathe, then, is to be with.

Pneuma was born out of a three-month residency where I researched how to reintroduce a sensory awareness of tidal changes in the Waddenzee to my body. See the process blog here! Using wetness sensors, radio signals, and wearable haptic feedback devices, I translated the sea’s shifting presence into bodily sensation. As I breathed, slept, worked, and dreamed, the tidal cycle moved through me. 

These strange beings are inspired by micro-algae/phytoplankton I found in the mud by the Waddenzee known as 'Kiezelwieren' or 'Diatoms'. When the tide comes in, they wiggle themselves down a layer deeper into the mud and come back out again when it’s sunny and low tide. When taken to the lab, researchers observe that they still move with the tidal rhythms after they have been removed from their environment.

They also form the fundamental base layer of many ecosystems: incredibly, these tiny things produce 20-50 percent of the oxygen on earth every year, and are the main fertilisers of the amazon basin, carried by winds from the sahara desert. When seen under the microscope they are like little rainbows or jewels – this is because they build a cell wall from silica – the same reason why microchips look like rainbows!

All photos are credited to: Sophie van Veen | Loods6