When You Whistle, It Makes Air Come Out, 2019















This cinematic installation, which includes the sound of breathing, is inspired by The Child’s Conception of Physical Causality (1927), a publication by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. The author and his collaborators interviewed groups of children of different ages in several cities in Switzerland, sometimes accompanied by simple experiments, in an attempt to determine the development of the concept of cause.
Ana Torfs was especially interested in the chapters that deals with children’s precausal explanations of the origins of air, wind and breath. The answers they give to questions as: ‘Where does the wind come from’, ‘What happens when you blow’, ‘Why does one breath’, ‘Where does the air in your mouth come from’ are both innocent and surprising. She slid their responses letter by letter into the strips of an old light box and edited the filmed sentences to the rhythm of her breathing.