The Art of Living Long

Don't miss Vanessa Damilola Macaulay's The Art of Living Long!

This program is a lecture performance that examines the racial assumptions embedded in the spirometer, a device used to gauge lung capacity. For Black people, breath has historically been interpreted primarily by institutions linked to slavery, and their ongoing legacy in policing, medicine, environmental policies, and the prison system. In these contexts, simply breathing often becomes a form of surveillance, suspicion, or regulation.

Through research, performance, and video, this work encourages audiences to consider the political and historical dimensions of breath. Rather than fixing or redeeming the spirometer, this lecture performance examines its underlying logic, rethinks its role, and proposes a new way to measure, hear, and interpret breath.

Artist Biography:

Vanessa Damilola Macaulay is a Black British artist based in Chicago whose work unfolds through performance, video, and text. She is an Assistant Professor in Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her research and making are deeply informed by Black feminist thought, centring embodied knowledge, collective care, and the material histories of Black women’s lives. Her artistic practice moves fluidly between autobiographical traces and archival excavation, drawing on performance as both method and site for imagining otherwise. Recent projects include ‘Breathing Race into the Machine’, which unsettles racial logics embedded in medical technologies, and ‘Where the Compass Breaks Open’, which approaches the ‘South’ not as a fixed geography but as a method of relation shaped by shared and uneven histories. Macaulay’s work has been presented in theatres, galleries, museums, and festivals across Europe, South Africa, and the United States, including the International Museum of Surgical Science (Chicago), the Momentary (Arkansas), Buzzcut (Scotland), and Driftwood Studios (South Africa). 

Beer and wine will be available for purchase. 

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Please Note: Tickets are non-refundable, but are transferable to other people. There is a limited number of tickets available, so pre-registration is strongly encouraged. Photography inside the Museum is prohibited. By entering the event premises, you consent to photography, audio recording, video recording, and its release, publication, exhibition, or reproduction to be used for news, promotional purposes, advertising, inclusion on websites, social media, or any other purpose by The College of Physicians/The Mütter Museum and its affiliates and representatives. 

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