INTO AIR
Into Air is a 25-minute choral meditation in which each singer moves through the music according to the rhythm of their own breath. The was work created in collaboration with artist Dawn Ng and unfolds in exact synchrony with one of her video artworks documenting the gradual melting of a monumental frozen block of pigment. It was first presented as part of Performance Exchange in London in 2022 and later presented at LUMA in London in 2023, and FRIEZE New York in 2024.
The piece emerged in response to Dawn’s body of work documenting the disintegration of monumental frozen blocks of pigment — a movement from solidity and mass towards dissolution, evaporation, and disappearance.
In Into Air, five singers move through the music according to the rhythm of their own breathing, with each bar unfolding on a single exhale.
As a result, the work behaves like a kind of musical meditation: structures slowly build and disintegrate, textures appear and dissolve, and harmonies shift like states of matter. Because each singer follows their own breath, the piece has an indeterminate quality — no two performances are ever the same, and the form can change radically from one iteration to the next.
At its centre is a text drawn from Ecclesiastes 3 — fragments that reflect on cycles of time, loss, change, mourning, healing, scattering, and gathering. There is no conductor; instead, the passing of time is marked by nine cues from a chiming singing bowl, guiding the ensemble through the work’s evolving states.
Dawn Ng and Alex Mills, Into Air, 2022, at St. Cyprian's Church, London, curated by Jenn Ellis and presented by Sullivan+Strumpf, part of Performance Exchange 2022.
Singers: Rebecca Hardwick, Jess Dandy, Feargal Mostyn-Williams, James Robinson, Ben Rowarth.
Images: Damian Griffiths