| 22nd October 2006 09:08 AM |
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| jostorm |
Hey, folks, I'm back from Madrid and immensely relieved we're still talking about the Chicago Summit!!!! 
Saw this programme on BBC before I left, wish she had done the installation about the Stones instead, oh well....still an eye opener how being a music fan simply transcends space and time and language and politics and culture and religion and...
CANDICE BREITZ
BALTIC, Gateshead
now until 28-Jan-2007
General information
WORKING CLASS HERO (A PORTRAIT OF JOHN LENNON)
During a recent residency at BALTIC, artist Candice Breitz invited a diverse community of dedicated John Lennon fans to pay tribute to their hero in a recording studio in Newcastle upon Tyne. Each fan was given the opportunity to re-perform Lennon's first solo album Plastic Ono Band (1970), from beginning to end. The resulting 25-channel video installation, with a looping duration of 39 minutes and 55 seconds (matching the length of the original album), will premiere at BALTIC, Gateshead on Tuesday 10 October.
The Lennon fans were recruited from far and wide to participate in the project, the sole criteria for their eventual inclusion being that each was required to answer a detailed questionnaire to prove their sincere devotion to Lennon and his music. Over 400 fans from as far a field as Mexico City, Moscow and Tokyo expressed an interest in taking part in the project. Out of the 40 who were invited to Newcastle to pay homage to Lennon, 25 fans are featured in the final installation. They range in age from 25 to 62, and in addition to 8 Geordies and 5 Liverpudlians, include participants from Wales, Scotland, Japan, Italy and the United States.
Working Class Hero synchronises 25 intimate portraits of the fans in a kaleidoscopic portrait of Lennon. The installation will be displayed on 25 plasma screens that will be staggered spirally around BALTIC's seven-story-high public stairway. Each 42" plasma screen is dedicated to one fan's idiosyncratic re-performance of the howling and cathartic songs on Plastic Ono Band, an album that explores the traumas of Lennon's childhood (isolation, abandonment and death), and which was made parallel to Lennon and Yoko Ono undergoing intense Primal Therapy with Dr. Arthur Janov.
Working Class Hero is the fourth in a series of portraits of musical icons by Breitz (preceded by portraits of Bob Marley, Michael Jackson and Madonna). Collectively, the portraits are an ongoing survey of the culture of the fan and the delicate mechanisms of projection, identification and consumption that characterise the relationship between an icon and his/her community of fans.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
Candice Breitz was born in Johannesburg in 1972, and holds degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg), University of Chicago and Columbia University (NYC), as well as having participated in the Whitney Independent Studio Program run by the Whitney Museum in New York. She has recently had solo exhibitions at the Castello di Rivoli (Turin), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Modern Art Oxford (Oxford), De Appel (Amsterdam) and White Cube (London). She has participated in Biennales in Johannesburg (1995), Venice (2005), Sao Paolo (1998), Kwangju (2000), Taipei (2000) and Istanbul (1999). Breitz lives and works in Berlin where she has been based for the last 4 years. She is a professor at the University of Art in Braunschweig, Germany.
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| 22nd October 2006 09:21 AM |
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| jostorm |
And may I just say, before someone starts bitching "John Lennon was an arsehole" or "I never liked the Beatles anyway"...blabla, that the interesting aspect of this installation is that she encouraged all these "closet" fans, that had probably spent half their lives singing to the songs in front of their bedroom mirrors and playing air guitar to them when no one was about, but who probably kept the noise down because of the neighbours and their mum and whomever else, to blast them as loud as they wanted, and that you see from the facial expressions of these singers that for the first time in their lives they could really "let rip"....Very impressive to watch! |
| 22nd October 2006 11:21 AM |
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| GotToRollMe |
I'm a HUGE John Lennon/Beatles fan. Sounds very interesting...thanks Jo!
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| 22nd October 2006 03:21 PM |
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| MrPleasant |
His Lost Weekend has been a huge influence for me. |
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