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Shaun Leonardo: I Can’t Breathe, 2016; performance video from VOLTA NYC, New York, NY, March 4, 2016; 36:22 min. Videography: Alan Roth.


I Can’t Breathe


Author
Nina Zurier

Decade

2000s 2010s


Tags

Activism Performance
Racial Justice Sports Video



“I Can’t Breathe is a public-participatory workshop and performance that takes the form of a self-defense class. Over the course of a half hour, participants learn a range of self-defense techniques—from purely pacifist, self-protective maneuvers (including how one may relieve the pressure of a choke hold) to more overt, defensive strategies. (Participants do not learn offensive strikes or moves.)

Participants are then placed and paired off in a staggered arrangement. With certain cues given by the artist, each pair enacts the self-defense techniques just learned, alternating in the role of the aggressor. As the artist recites a script inspired by Nina Simone, each pair elects which action to take solely based on how he or she internalizes the words’ meaning.

The overall, impromptu composition of defensive actions thus creates a reflection and meditation on our community’s legacy of self-preservation, and continued desire/need/fight to protect and survive. The piece will be conducted in memory of Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Eric Garner, Jamar Clark, Laquan McDonald, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, Ramarley Graham, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin . . . and countless others.”

—Shaun Leonardo


Shaun Leonardo is a Brooklyn-based artist from Queens, New York City. He received his MFA from SFAI in 2005. His multidisciplinary work negotiates societal expectations of manhood, namely definitions surrounding Black and brown masculinities, along with its notions of achievement, collective identity, and experience of failure. His performance practice, anchored by his work in Assembly—a diversion program for court-involved youth at the Brooklyn-based nonprofit Recess—is participatory and invested in a process of embodiment.

In the year 2020, “I can’t breathe” is no longer inextricably linked to the last words of Eric Garner as he was killed in a chokehold by New York City policeman Daniel Pantaleo in 2014. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd’s last words were “I can’t breathe” as a Minneapolis policeman, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his throat until he was dead. “Over the past decade," the New York Times found, "at least 70 people have died in law enforcement custody after saying the same words — I can’t breathe. The dead ranged in age from 19 to 65. The majority of them had been stopped or held over nonviolent infractions, 911 calls about suspicious behavior, or concerns about their mental health. More than half were black.”

 NZ 


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