“Lux(ury) of Air” is an artistic research project by researcher Annemarie Piscaer that engages participants with the issue of air pollution through workshops and material engagement. As air pollution threatens both health and climate, the workshops posed a simple yet urgent question: Is air a luxury, or a necessity?
In the workshops, participants were invited to look upward, observe the sky, and gather data. For this, light meters to measure sky brightness (in lux) were used, combined with hands-on practices—drawing, photography, sublimation, and cyanotype printing—students translated the invisible dynamics of air into tangible forms. This interplay between observation and making offers new perspectives to sense, record, and reflect on the cultural dimensions of air.
In July 2025, the workshop took place at the Institute of Creativity and Innovation (ICI), Xiamen University China. Over two weeks, students explored the poetic and material dimensions of air, developing individual works in diverse media. The workshop culminated in a collective exhibition.
More about the ICI Summer Workshops: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/97JuZunT4EELJmyxEqYPCw
More about: Annemarie Piscaer at ICI Summer Workshops, Xiamen University
As an extension of the workshop, the students of the ICI Summer School also took part in an artistic exchange project titled ‘Air Mail’. Each student created a postcard reflecting on the air in Xiamen, addressed to students in the Material Ecologies minor at Avans University. These postcards travelled from China to the Netherlands, by airplane and bicycle, arriving in September. In November, Dutch students will respond with their own messages from the Netherlands: (visual) reflections on the Dutch sky.
This ongoing exchange encourages the students to think of air not just as a shared atmosphere: an invitation to continue the dialogue. We need to keep on corresponding.
The artistic research project “Lux(ury) of Air” is part of Piscaer’s PhD “Aerial and Airing, a Situated Design Approach: Mapping Environmental Data through Material”. The PhD investigates how environmental data—especially air—can be represented beyond conventional, quantitative, detached methods by integrating situated knowledges, pedagogy, and materiality. Within “Lux(ury) of Air”, Piscaer explores how materials –and engagement through materials, can be used to represent air and air pollution in educational settings.
More about: Annemarie Piscaer’s accepted as a PhD candidate of the Doctoral Program at KU Leuven
‘Humans are atmospheric beings, particles, dust, in intimate cycles of exchange, actors with an incredible force.’
‘We need to become attuned actors with a deeper understanding of all the other particles.’
Annemarie Piscaer is a researcher in the Situated Art, Design and Technology research group, tutor on the New Design & Attitudes study programme at St. Joost School of Art & Design, and PhD candidate in the Doctoral Program at KU Leuven.
The research group Situated Art, Design and Technology (SADT) focuses on the societal embedding and embodiment of knowledge production that art and design research enables. The conducted research contributes to a deeper understanding of technological developments and their impact on people, society, and the environment, and to the development of situated approaches in the creative sector and beyond. In doing so, it advances a wider acknowledgement of artistic and design research as a mode of knowledge production, one that is grounded in creativity and critical imagination as a way of generating insight into, and intervening in, societal transitions driven by technology.
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