Interconnectedness, embodiment, and affect
Camila Sposati is a visual artist and researcher born in São Paulo and currently based in Vienna. Her work investigates processes of transformation and energy, using methods that often closely resemble scientific research methodologies. She compares material and historical processes to challenge the material in its official time and significance.
Camila Sposati combines chemistry and art in her mixed-media works, producing evocative visual meditations on such topics as the origins of life and the Earth, forms of energy and entropy, and the elemental chemical compounds. In her work, Sposati aims to reveal the unseen physical, chemical, and historical layers underpinning humans and their surroundings, as she explains: “The invisible, even though it remains in this state, also needs to be understood.”
A free dialogue developed around her practice and some guiding concepts of her work.
A conversation born out of an invitation to share her thoughts on the concept of resonance.
C.S.
Veit Erlmann, a prominent scholar in ethnomusicology and sound studies, engages with the concept of resonance in thought-provoking ways, especially in relation to listening, the body, and cultural perception. While he doesn't necessarily develop a singular "theory of resonance" like sociologist Hartmut Rosa, Erlmann often uses resonance as a metaphor and analytical tool to explore the interconnectedness of sound, subjectivity, and modernity.
Erlmann argues that modern Western thought developed through a disavowal and reconfiguration of resonance—both as a physical phenomenon and as a model of relational knowing. The Enlightenment ideal of reason depended on separating subject from object, self from other, and mind from body. In contrast, resonance implies interconnectedness, embodiment, and affect.
Exhibition view: Camila Sposati. Breath Pieces. ifa Gallery Stuttgart 2023. Courtesy ifa, photo: Andreas Körner
A.L.
Interconnectedness, embodiment, and affect. Three words and at the same time three soul that human beings are gradually losing. The hyper-digital world in which we live, the technocracy and the techno-capitalism that is leading us toward an inevitable disconnection between our mind, our body and everything is around us, reawakes the necessity to exercise this sense of resonance that you explore in your work. A practice that embodies a process of radical becoming with each other, A process that involves being open to otherness both physically and mentally, involved in an exchange of energy, knowledge and experience.
Your work is the attempt to underline the complexity, the interconnection and the multilayer dimension in which we live; to open our sensitivity to worlds, sounds, places, awareness that Western anthropic anesthesia has now forgotten. How does this artistic thought come about and what are the main references that guide your production?
C.S.
In my series of work as in Phonosophia instrument (since 2015) is a synesthetic exploration of instruments that listen, a touch that sees—an intersensorial field where perception is unstable and meaning unsettled. These instruments resist functional expectation; they do not always “perform” and in doing so, they provoke discomfort or irritation in some audiences.
Rather than reinforcing the viewer’s sense of control, the instruments cultivate a space of doubt, repositioning perception as a co-created, indeterminate process. By withholding immediate comprehension or utility, Phonosophia questions dominant modes of sensing and knowing—offering instead a speculative, ethical encounter beyond interpretation. The work invites not resolution, but attunement.
Phonosophia consists of breath-based instruments made of clay or latex, each with only a single keynote. They are designed not for musicians, but for those who do not know what they are doing—those willing to invent sound through embodied exploration rather than technical mastery. In this way, the act of playing becomes a gesture of unlearning, where breath is both material and method.
Exhibition view: Camila Sposati. Breath Pieces. ifa Gallery Stuttgart 2023. Courtesy ifa, photo Andreas Körner
Tumbum livre (Mouth, ear and gravity) 2015, acrylic, pencil on paper
A.L.
These sculptures make me think of Giuseppe Penone's work “Soffi”. Although sound is not the protagonist of that series of works - while the breath, the relationship between the artist's body and what is hidden in the space of the earth - the theme of the connection between human and nature tie that experience with your research.
You speak about attunement. What tuning are you talking about? And you also talk about senses. Which ones are you most interested in?
How do the sinuous forms that characterize the aesthetics of these works come about?
C.S.
The relation you draw with Giuseppe Penone’s Soffi (Breaths) is striking—it suggests an intimate proximity between breath, matter, and the Earth's body. What resonates with me is not so much a focus on the external body, but on what lies within: that shared, internal dimension where all beings connect. Breath becomes more than physiology; it becomes a trace, a mark, a soft imprint of the invisible. This brings me to a series of color photographs I titled Smoke (since 2003), which I’m now rethinking as the basis for temporary sculptural interventions against the grey buildings of São Paulo. In these works, smoke becomes the material through which transformation becomes visible. It reveals the dust — the residual, the particulate — momentarily suspended in air.
My interest is not in the body as a site of identity, but in the internal. In my work, my instruments operate on two scales: the macro (geological, planetary) and the micro (the internal, intimate, almost imperceptible). These scales are not separate—they echo one another.These two scales are the human scale, our eyes are not able to reach this view.
In Penone’s Soffio di Foglie (Breath of Leaves), there is a performative gesture embedded in the making: the breath becomes a sculptural force. The leaves hold the memory, the exhale becomes fossil-like, registering presence through absence. It is not a performance in the conventional sense, but rather a silent choreography between the body and the material—a moment where the boundaries between the human and the natural dissolve.
I often think about attunement — not in the sense of control or mastery, but as a way of making sense that is felt rather than imposed. To attune is to listen, to align, to be sensitive to rhythms that are already there — in the body, in breath, in the Earth. It’s not about dominating material or shaping it into a predefined form. It’s about responding, co-existing, allowing. When someone plays Phonosophia, for example, they’re not controlling the instrument in a traditional sense. They’re entering into a relationship with it. Breath becomes a medium of attunement In this way, attunement becomes a form of knowledge. A way of being present — not above, not outside, but with.
About senses:
In Portuguese, saying "tocar um instrumento" (to touch an instrument) rather than "play" already invites a more tactile, intimate relationship with sound. It’s as if you're not merely producing music but entering into physical communion with the object.
In Phonosophia, if instruments were to listen instead of produce sound, it suggests a radical shift from output to input, from expression to reception. Listening here isn’t passive; it demands presence, attention, sensitivity, and openness to subtle signals—almost like tuning into the world’s vibrations, whispers, and silences.
On the other hand, when I think about sense it like to bring the tapestry at the Cluny Museum’s La Dame à la Licorne is a beautiful layer to add. The sixth tapestry, often interpreted as representing “À mon seul désir” (To my only desire), goes beyond the five senses. It's enigmatic—desire, will, or even renunciation. It suggests that there’s a sixth sense, one not easily named. Perhaps it’s the sense that emerges when the others are blurred, when we are no longer just seeing or touching or hearing—but feeling through all of them, fused.
This blurring of the senses—synesthesia, perhaps, or simply poetic perception—is incredibly fertile ground for both art-making and teaching. Teaching by eyes, as you say, could be understood not just as transmitting visual information, but awakening sight in the poetic sense: perception, awareness, attention. So maybe the question: what kind of transformation happens when it collides?
Sinuous/ Serpent Form:
Phonosophia instruments are wind instruments, but to me, the tubes are far more than structural components — they conduits of process. They represent the space in between the player (or toucher) and the moment when sound comes into being, There is a text “thinking through tubes” by anthropologist Stephen Hugh-Jones, reflecting on tubes in the cosmology of northwestern Amerindian peoples, that has deeply influenced me. His insights revealed to me that tubes are not just physical channels — they can also serve as metaphysical connectors, bridging worlds, states, and meanings.
There is a kind of centripetal movement within the air passing through the tube — a spiraling inward, as though drawn by an invisible force. This echoes the gravity of the Earth, a constant pull that shapes both sound and being. I’ve come to refer to the spherical and tubular parts of the Phonosophia instrument as Gravity — intentionally giving this name to something else, to underscore the deeper truth that it is gravity — physical, emotional, existential — that holds everything together.
Exhibition view: Camila Sposati. Breath Pieces. ifa Gallery Stuttgart 2023. Courtesy ifa, photo: Andreas Körner
Exhibition view: Camila Sposati. Breath Pieces. part 2. ifa Gallery Berlin 2023. Courtesy ifa Gallery Berlin, photo Victoria Tomaschko
Workshop: Eine Verabredung mit drei klingenden Körpern / Encontro com 3 corpos sonoros
A.L.
To be relationship with something = A way of being present, not above, not outside, but with. I am putting together your words in a sort of simple equation because I think you express something really urgent today. To be present, to recognize, to participate. Immersed in the techno-capitalistic and digital dynamics we can’t recognize reality anymore, and we can’t perceive our authentic presence within human and other than human worlds.
I perceive Phonosophia as an exercise to train our senses and to try to move beyond the sensory anesthesia of which we are imprisoned.
This leads me to reflect on the fact that today's researches (rightly) are focusing a lot on issues such as the relationship with otherness, with other than human worlds, interspecies diplomacy, and the rights of nature. All correct, I share these researches. I myself have developed exhibitions and projects on these themes. However, I think it is equally urgent to work on human beings. People are hyper connected, but tremendously isolated, unable to be empathic, resonant, caring creatures.
Indigenous peoples can teach you a lot about that, and it's no coincidence that your works clearly evoke that world, those sensitivities, consciousness, energies, forms, skills.
C.S.
Absolutely—and thank you for articulating this. Indigenous knowledge offers profound ways of understanding the world, deeply rooted in land, time, and community. While more Indigenous voices like Ailton Krenak and Davi Kopenawa are being published, systemic issues such as land dispossession and cultural erasure still persist.
A.L.
The word “community” brings me back to the theme of relationship that underlies your work. Not surprisingly, the performative aspect seems to me as central. Observing your practice from above, the individual gesture evokes the wish for a new collective ritual. The individual body becomes a collective body. That happens in Phonosophia Bodies. Please, would tell me more about that project?
C.S.
Thanks for using the word relationship instead of relational. I agree it is very much on the term the sculptures are in dialogue or have something to say or to be listen. Everybody including things contains the latency of the subject.
In the project Phonosophies Bodies (2019–2021), I expanded the conceptual framework of Phonosophia (ongoing since 2015) by inviting artists to create their own instruments derived from parts of their own bodies. To support this process, we worked intensively for two months, including the preparatory phase with a dancer, during which participants explored corporeal awareness and movement to inform their decisions. Importantly, all participants were paid for their contributions, and each stage of the process was developed collaboratively.
Every decision—from the bodily articulation of the instrument to its sound—was thoughtfully shaped in dialogue with curators, a dance facilitator, and a digital designer. This collaborative effort aimed to create a balance between the material (clay) and the digital, ensuring that one did not overshadow the other.
The participants were invited to select a specific location in the city where their instrument would be “played,” emphasizing context not merely as a backdrop, but as an active co-producer of meaning. The performances were conceived not just for an audience.
Ultimately, the instruments were realized only in digital form otherwise it. would have required an immense amount of time—perhaps years.
Bring back what you have asked me the sense of “community”, what I challenge in this project is that being together is not about amalgamation; it’s about coexistence. Like in an orchestra or a theater play, each instrument or actor retains its distinct voice—its singularity is vital. What interests me is not erasure of difference, but the challenge of coexisting despite the conflict.
Exhibition view: Camila Sposati. Breath Pieces. ifa Gallery Stuttgart 2023. Courtesy ifa, photo: Andreas Körner
Exhibition view: Camila Sposati. Breath Pieces. part 2. ifa Gallery Berlin 2023. Courtesy ifa Gallery Berlin, photo Victoria Tomaschko
Workshop: Eine Verabredung mit drei klingenden Körpern / Encontro com 3 corpos sonoros
A.L.
Coexistence. A word that sounds very important. A seemingly utopian scenario in this time of disconnection on both the human / other-than-human and human / human levels. A highly political concept today, in light of the escalation of conflicts worldwide.
Don't you think we should focus on rebuilding a sense of coexistence among humans, in parallel with that with the natural world?
C.S.
I understand that we are part of the natural world, yet as Viveiros de Castro suggests, different bodies perceive and inhabit the world differently. This complicates the notion of coexistence. We must acknowledge the tensions that arise within it—not just between humans and nature, among ourselves. The key question is: what do we do with that tension? Do we hide it, ignore it, or can we use it as a driving force?
If any hope exists, it lies in our ability to pay the most humble, serious, and diligent attention possible to the intellectual traditions of those peoples who never held the astonishing presumption of imagining themselves greater than the world they inhabit
Exhibition view: Camila Sposati. Breath Pieces. part 2. ifa Gallery Berlin 2023. Courtesy ifa Gallery Berlin, photo Victoria Tomaschko
Workshop: Eine Verabredung mit drei klingenden Körpern / Encontro com 3 corpos sonoros
Cover image: Camila Sposati playing Solua instrument, Digging For Samples In The Theatre Of The Long Now | A Subterranean Experiment. Stuttgart.
1st April, 2023 1- 5 pm. Photo: D. Brewing/ © ifa
