Breath(e)
Toward Climate and Social Justice

Polymode, as part of Getty’s region-wide initiative PST ART: Art and Science Collide, collaborated with the Hammer on the publication Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice, organized by co-curators Glenn Kaino and Mika Yoshitake. The exhibition and coinciding catalogue consider environmental art practices that address the climate crisis, anthropogenic disasters, and their inescapable intersection with issues of equity and social justice. 

Breath(e) was conceived during the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic and America’s racial reckoning in 2020. As part of the publication, Brian Johnson and Silas Munro co-authored the essay, The Book We Didn’t Make & The Book that We Did, to shed light on making a book about climate justice amid a global climate crisis. Instead of plastic shrink wrap, The cover of the book is wrapped in IBO ONE, a Forest Stewardship Certified paper and was printed in Belgium with a printer using 97% renewable energy and 3% natural gas power mix with 40% of power generated on site. 

The design of the book generated with our poetic research process referenced a lineage of artists, designers, and activists contending with climate change: Victor Papanek, Buckminster Fuller, George Washington Carver, William Morris, Ken Garland, Carolyn Finney, Julia Watson, Bruce Mau, and Anne Lund. We chose Monument Grotesk and Romie as contrasting typographic forces on a grid that mashed up histories of modernist avant-garde with arts and crafts revivalist classicism. These families helped create great different structures for the varied voices of essays, artist manifestos, and poetic contributions. The Table of Contents and Essay Openers used typographic space and rhythm to embody feelings of breath and space to breathe.