Kanarinka P

Title: It takes 154,000 breaths to evacuate Boston

Location: Boston, MA, 2006

How do you measure fear in a society obsessed with security and preparedness?

I tried to measure our collective fear by running the newly installed Boston evacuation route system and translating its distance into human breaths.

The project involved 26 running performances along the evacuation route system. I ran the routes with large amounts of gear & technology on my body. The project also involves a podcast and a website where the breathing audio files and statistics about my body are tracked as it traversed these public spaces.

The project is an attempt to artistically measure our post-9/11 collective fear in the individual breaths that it takes to traverse these new geographies of insecurity.

The $827,500 Boston emergency evacuation system was installed in 2006 to demonstrate the city's preparedness for evacuating people in snowstorms, hurricanes, infrastructure failures, fires and/or terrorist attacks. It is part of many security measures that have visible and tangible manifestations in Boston's public spaces, including random bag searches, new surveillance control centers built in major T stations, terror simulations in public space, and "See Something Say Something" advertising campaigns throughout public transit.

How we feel in public space has changed. How do you measure this?

Kanarinka (Catherine D'Ignazio) is an artist and educator. She is Co-Director of the experimental curatorial group iKatun and a founding member of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things. After spending eight years in educational technology as a java programmer, she now teaches at RISD's Digital Media Graduate Program and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston . Her artwork has been exhibited at Eyebeam, the ICA Boston, MASSMoCA, and the Western Front among other locations.

Kanarinka