Anthea Caddy

Projection, Energies and Atmospheric Interventions in Civic Space

Projection is framed as an atmospheric intervention that works through air to unsettle the boundaries between inside and outside, public and private, and physical and social space. This presentation examines projection as an energetic form of artistic intervention in civic space, focusing on how projected energies move on, through, and within air as a material and relational medium that connects buildings, bodies, and architectural space. In this context, walls, borders, and fixed architectural limits are understood not only as physical structures, but as social boundaries produced and negotiated through atmospheric conditions.

Drawing from my installation practice alongside artistic and activist interventions in public environments, the talk explores how projection generates spatial effects through energy, vibration, resonance, illumination, and the movement of air. Rather than functioning as representation, projection operates as a material force that reorganises perception, orientation, and spatial experience through atmospheric transmission.

The presentation considers how these energetic and aerial operations unfold within civic architecture and public infrastructure, where buildings become temporary screens and surfaces for intervention. Such practices are understood as subversive acts: using projected energies carried through air to intervene in regulated civic space, disrupt fixed spatial and social divisions, and reconfigure how environments are sensed and occupied.

Biography

Anthea Caddy is an artist and researcher working with spatiality, energetic projection, and the territorial possibilities of sound. She approaches sound sculpturally, treating it as material with form, mass, and presence, projected at scale across architectural, atmospheric, and bodily membranes to make spatiality legible and territorial. The installations operate across architectural and environmental distances, generating acoustic territories and air-formed rooms: environments sensed rather than seen.

Her work develops as a succession of interrelated site-specific projects built using custom-designed parabolic reflector systems, resonant and transmissive sounding bodies, and purpose-built amplification infrastructures. Key works include Long Throw (2019–), an ongoing series most recently presented as Long Throw Whispers (2025) at the Luxembourg Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale; Long Wave (2020–); Love Numbers (2023), Venice Music Biennale; and Cosmological Architectures (2025–). Her work has been presented at HKW Berlin, Museo Reina Sofía, and Stedelijk Museum among others. She holds a doctorate from UNSW Sydney and lives and works in Berlin.