Kamila Iżykowicz

⏤ Breath is a temporary pact of volatile exchange between the animal and plant kingdoms.

The Department of Culture for Breath in 2030 presents a digital archive of multispecies scents from native pine forests. 

The project explores an unsettled future, questioning humanity’s relationships with other living entities. It proposes a series of speculative video capsules to highlight the value of breath — and the importance of our sense of smell — by examining them within a digital vacuum. AuraForest is a catalogue of loss: the loss of breath, loss of smell, loss of species.

The Library of Scents was excavated from the most ancient forest in Eastern Europe, derived from a tree known to humans as the Scots Pine...

[learn about the full process behind AuraForest]

An ongoing investigation into biomaterials that questions the lifespan of valuable products and the use of natural resources.

I am working on the creation of a material—or rather a new technique of shaping and drying biomaterials—that can hold an embedded scent while also disappearing in time, shifting its value from permanent to temporary and volatile.

Jewellery is often a physical representation of our social status, a material means of wearing—and showing off—something precious.

This evolved into an artefact from a fictional tribe that measured time in breaths instead of minutes as part of the AuraForest project. They would embed multispecies scents into their wearables as a demonstration of their appreciation for the symbiotic relationship between themselves and their habitat.

Dr Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Design Products + Futures, Royal College of Art

Oron Catts, SymbioticA, The University of Western Australia

Matthew Thrift, MUBI

Dr Monika Bakke, Adam Mickiewicz University

Doc. Dr Paula Pongrac, Jozef Stefan Institute

Dr Anna Maria Pirttilä, University of Oulu

Dr Sophia Satchell-Baeza, University of the Arts London

Bartek Bartos, Manifiesta film

Lou Marcellin, Theatrum Mundi

DF platfrom