Aire

Life is between the first and last breath. If respiration is a vital condition, Aleix Segura seem to contradict logic. He is world champion of static apnea in 2016 with 9´23´´in a swimming pool.That not breathing is what keeps the beat of his heart beating and his blood pulsating. He is also Guinness World Record with 24 minutes and 3 seconds without taking in air (previous respiration with pure oxygen) . A body lying on the water of a pool, an instant between birth and death. A meditation about the fragility of human existence.

In apnea time passes slowly and the second hand seems not to advance, as if the hands of the clock were lead. Try it. Take air and hold it until you can no more, until the suffering makes you stop and your whole brain forces you to give up. Breathe, take a breath of saving air. Apnea is to overcome the impulse to breathe, the survival instinct is to overcome the brain using the brain itself, to dominate  the body, to withstand the spasms and contractions of the diaphragm, not to think, to let go. It is an extreme and risky sport. Its territory is the conquest of time and the Human limits and therefore moves  between the purely physical and the transcendental. What interests me most is that moment of concentration, of awareness of our fragility, that return to the maternal womb, conscious of the fine line that delimits a single breath of air.