artist
Daniel Pflumm
Switzerland / Germany
Daniel Pflumm lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Swiss Institute, New York (2021); 6817 Melrose, Los Angeles (2017); Park View, Los Angeles (2016); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2008); Supportico Lopez 32, Naples, Italy (2007); Praz – Delavallade, Paris (2006); Greene Naftali, New York (2005); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2004); and Galerie Neu, Berlin (2003).
Daniel Pflumm
Breath, 1995
Daniel Pflumm’s video installation Breath (1995) immerses viewers in an entrancing montage of news-presenter iconography, blending television news aesthetics with a pulsating, rhythmic soundscape of the breaths taken by the presenters, reminiscent of electronic music. In this hypnotic sequence, familiar news titles and typical news-presenter gestures become fragmented, their typical appeal destabilized by rapid edits of the (normally unnoticed) breaths they take between the phrases they speak.
Pflumm’s work destabilizes familiar human-centric media spaces—television news broadcasts—by amplifying the typically unnoticed interim breaths taken by news presenters. Through rhythmic montage and looping repetition, Breath reveals these invisible sonic structures as dynamic ecological exchanges, positioning breath itself as a resonant medium linking internal human rhythms to external media environments.