BREATHCORE is a long-term inquiry into breath as both boundary and bridge.
Launched by performer Michael Schmid in 2015, BREATHCORE approaches breathing not as a mystical force, but as a fragile, bodily fact— an act we perform constantly, often unconsciously, and always alone.
We cannot truly share a breath. Air may flow around us, between us, but the act itself remains individual, private, untouchable.
And yet, we coexist within the same atmosphere, constrained by the same environmental, social, and emotional pressures.
BREATHCORE focuses on this tension. Through practices, rehearsals and performances, it explores the awkward, necessary negotiations of proximity, presence, and exposure. What happens when we listen not only to breath itself, but to its limits?
When we stop chasing unity and instead attend to the edges of what can be shared?
BREATHCORE proposes a form of collectivity not through merging, but through mutual recognition of breath’s boundaries—
its rhythms, ruptures, and refusals.