Lastgaspism: Art and Survival in the Age of Pandemic is an exhibition based on the book of the same name. Lastgaspism is a collection of interviews, critical essays, and artist portfolios that consider matters of life and death having to do with breath, both allegorical and literal. Bringing into mutual proximity the ecological, political, public health, and spiritual crises of our time, this book considers the compounding nature of these events and their impact upon one another. Whether seen in the police choke murders that gave rise to the “I Can’t Breathe” slogans of the movement for racial justice, the life-taking and life-remaking COVID-19 pandemic, the white supremacist revolts propelled by fear of demographic suffocation, or the climate emergencies that have instituted near-permanent chaos, the act of gasping for breath is starkly exposing the either/or that stands before us: either we breathe or we die