Pat Toh

Topography of Breath

Topography of Breath evinces a different mode of mastery over our bodies: sports culture, and the intense focus on endurance and productivity. Structured to resemble high intensity interval training, Pat Toh maps the corporeality of exhaustion on a kinetic terrain of muscularity and breath.

The body is a document of one’s life, the politics of its own being, its desires, conflicts and ideals. In Singapore where economic performance forms the national identity, the body becomes a form of human capital to be disciplined for constant growth. One’s physical endurance and prowess parallels the capitalistic society that demands faster, longer, stronger performance from its subjects; the measure of neoliberal resilience.