This collaborative project will construct breathing machines that reflect and articulate different domains of knowledge and practice, animated and knitted together by a sensibility that is both ethnographic and poetic. The research team defines breathing machines as forms and forums for the building and expression of collectivity through the act of conspiring together around shared sets of research questions and theoretical / praxiological / poetic / literary writing or artistic and musical creation. They will be built via diasporic and transnationally collaborative interactions between research, teaching, and performance, coordinated by the research team in collaboration with scholars, artists, activists, educators, and practitioners across multiple fields. These collaborations will primarily traverse and link between the United States and South Africa, but there will be elements of the work that connect to activities and practitioners in Colombia. Each breathing machine will be curated by a different group of people, embodying transnational and transdisciplinary collectives. They will be attached to teaching and syllabi, resulting in curricula produced both for university students and for various communities of practice outside the research university.