Few things are as vital to human existence as the air we breathe. Without breath, life is extinguished. And yet it’s easy to take air for granted — it’s ever-present, intangible and invisible. Spanish architect and cultural theorist Nerea Calvillo (ES/UK) has spent her career investigating the material, technological, political and social dimensions of environmental pollution, devising DIY, collaborative and feminist approaches to sensing the environment. Much of her work has centered on the visual representation of air in the atmosphere and the invisible microscopic agents that influence air quality. Working with the art collective DIS (US), who in 2018 launched DIS.ART, a radical video streaming education platform, Calvillo will present a new video essay on the biopolitics of pollen, commissioned by Matadero Madrid for Tentacular 2019. Following Calvillo’s presentation and the video’s debut, she will be joined in conversation by DIS’s Marco Roso.

Nerea Calvillo is an architect, researcher, curator, and Assistant Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (University of Warwick). Founder of the spatial design office C+ arquitectas and the air pollution visualization project In the Air, her projects have been presented, exhibited and published all over the world. Calvillo’s work investigates the material, technological, political and social dimensions of environmental pollution. This has led her to analyze notions of toxicity, digital infrastructures of environmental monitoring, DIY and collaborative forms of production, smart cities and feminist approaches to sensing the environment. Her current research is on toxic politics, pollen, atmospheres and queer urban political ecologies.

Marco Roso is a co-founder of DIS, a New York-based art collective (est. 2010). In 2018 the collective transitioned platforms from an online magazine, dismagazine.com, to a video streaming edutainment platform, dis.art, narrowing in on the future of education as entertainment.

DIS.ART is a radical video streaming education platform. Producing and publishing original series and docs by deep thinkers and leading artists, with the aim of expanding the scope of the most relevant practices and conversations of art, activism, philosophy or contemporary technologies in a reality in a perpetual state of change.