Private Project

In/Exhale (Ode to Mother)

Breathe In / Breathe Out. For most, the act of breathing is one of the most basic bodily functions, for others it's a thin line between life and death. As we age, our passageways are effected and obstructed by natural and manmade shifts to the air we breathe. Toxins, dander, pollen, pesticides, etc. can disrupt air quality. Breathing can be poetic, and at times seem violent.

  • TJ Norris
    Director
    Heaven & Hell, auto-porto-matic, Elemental Studies
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Abstract, Non-Narrative
  • Runtime:
    1 minute 35 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 19, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    250 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Black & White
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - TJ Norris

TJ Norris is an award-winning multidisciplinary conceptual artist based in Fort Worth, TX. He studied at Massachusetts College of Art and the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. Norris' film work has been sparse in the past but has included: a short titled 'auto-porto-matic' which was included in DCTV's Film Fest (1993, NYC) curated by Cheryl Dunye, and 'Infinitus' (2-Channel Installation, 72 mins, 2008) recipient of the Couture Grant (New American Art Union, OR).

Over the last decade his work has been included in the Red Dot Art Festival and Aqua Miami, as well as participation in art residencies with both Caldera (Oregon) and Kimmel Harding Nelson Art Center (Nebraska). Norris’ work has been reviewed in Art Ltd, Leonardo (MIT Press), Photographer’s Forum, The Oregonian, The Boston Globe and many other publications and has been featured in Tacoma Art Museum's 10th Northwest Biennial, A4 Art Museum (Chengdu, China), South Bend Museum of Art, Millepiani (Rome), CoCA Seattle, the Oregon Center on Photographic Art and many other institutions. His work explores the abstract psychology and social complexities of the urban environment. Examples of his work are held in various international private collections, as well as the Vanhaerents Art Collection (Brussels), Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fuller Museum of Art, the Museum de la Cuidad, Harvard University, Nike, and the RACC’s Visual Chronicle Collection. In 2018 Norris published his first monograph of photographic work titled ‘Shooting Blanks’ (2008-2013). Between the early 1990’s and 2013 he also spent years working as a freelance curator bringing shows to institutions as diverse as Tufts University Aidekman Art Center, SUNY/Binghamton Art Museum, Miller Fine Art Center, University of Oregon, Roland Dille Center for the Arts, Newspace Center for Photography, Boise State Visual Art Center and his own gallery/art space - Soundvision, among others.

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Director Statement

The mid-century was written in a gray, architectural haze—a time when smoke was an ambient fixture of the very room where I first struggled for air. I entered the world in a state of biological friction, an infant asthmatic fighting against the same atmosphere my mother consumed. Decades later, the cycle has achieved a haunting, inverted symmetry. While I have mastered the mechanics of my own breath, she now navigates a fragile terrain where oxygen is no longer a given, but a conquest. There is a spectral mirroring in this transition: the daughter who once wheezed in the cradle now watches the mother falter in the light, our roles reversed in a slow, rhythmic decay.

We remain tethered by an invisible umbilical cord—a conduit of history and respiration that connects us without ever defining us. This film is a visceral meditation on that strained ventilation, the miraculous act of oxygenating a body that is slowly becoming translucent. I have imbued the work with a gritty, "punk" luster, a visual language that mimics the flickering, raw motion of an X-ray. It is a cinematic study of damaged lungs in flux; grainy evidence of the struggle to remain, captured in the salt-heavy air of an endless horizon.