BC/AD
2008 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
59 min 36
Ian Breakwell
“BC/AD” (Before Cancer, After Diagnoses) is a video of photographs of the artist’s face dating from early childhood to the month before he died, accompanied by the last diary entries he wrote from April 2004 to July 2005 (entitled “50 Reasons for Getting Out of Bed”), from the period from when he lost his voice, thinking he had laryngitis, through the moment he was diagnosed with lung cancer and the subsequent treatment that was ultimately, ineffective. The diary entries are at once poignant, ironic, laced with gallows of humor, with his continued eye for the little incidents in life, interweaving the past with his experience of the present. The morphing of the portraits—the eyes and sight remaining leveled—is haunting, beginning with very blurry images of childhood and ending with a pin-sharp photograph of Breakwell the month before he died. As the tumor grows so does Breakwell’s introspection, as he meditates the horizon of his life, the randomness of fate and the meaning of time to someone in his condition. The quality of Breakwell’s voice changes throughout the course of the audio recording as he struggles to project, while the sound of his inhaling breath indicates a great difficulty of breathing. It was recorded in one take: 1 hour and 55 minutes. The illness thus manifests throughout the soundtrack. In confronting his mortality, “BC/AD” is a poignant work, at once poetic and mundane. It is an act of defiance that encapsulates many aspects of Breakwell’s approach to making art.
Ian Breakwell was a leading British conceptual artist active in the dematerializing of the hierarchy of modernity in the 1960s. Combining painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, film, collage, video, audio-tape, slide, digital imaging and performance, Breakwell’s work significantly contributed to considering art as documentation of a moment, rather than a marketable fine art piece. Initially influenced by Surrealism, Breakwell was best known for his observation of what he called ‘little epiphanies’ he observed around him and that he recorded in his diaries from the late 1960’s, which he exhibited as art works. Until 1980, the diaries often took on a visual format but from the 1980s onwards they took a mostly verbal format. One of the most celebrated of the diaries is the Walking Man Diary (1979) where Breakwell photographed a man who walked past his studio everyday on a circuitous, continuous route with no purpose. Alongside the photographs he recorded imagined conversations of people observing him. The photographs were arranged in a grid and presented as a diary.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
He wants Hong Kong to fall in love with theatre and he’s doing everything he can to make that happen | South China Morning Post He wants Hong Kong to fall in love with theatre and he’s doing everything he can to make that happen Performing arts in Hong Kong Hong Kong theatre wunderkind Tom Chan is the youngest and only producer to stage a long-running musical show in the city...
© » SLASH PARIS
Hommage à Vera Molnar — Cruciformes — MAC VAL Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne — Exposition — Slash Paris Connexion Newsletter Twitter Facebook Hommage à Vera Molnar — Cruciformes — MAC VAL Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne — Exposition — Slash Paris Français English Accueil Événements Artistes Lieux Magazine Vidéos Retour Précédent Suivant Hommage à Vera Molnar — Cruciformes Exposition Techniques mixtes Vue de l’exposition Cruciformes — Hommage à Vera Molnar , MAC VAL 2024 Photo © Aurélien Mole Hommage à Vera Molnar Cruciformes Encore environ 2 mois : 5 janvier → 8 avril 2024 Le 5 janvier 2024, Vera Molnar aurait eu cent ans...
© » TWOCOATSOFPAINT
Mary Jones: Layered histories – Two Coats of Paint Mary Jones, American Interior 2023, oil on digitally printed canvas, 52 x 38 inches Contributed by Katy Crowe / “Significant Properties,” the title of Mary Jones’s current exhibition at as-is.la and her first in Los Angeles in some years, aptly suggests real estate worth seeing...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Solid are the Winds: Aeolian Encounters at The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial (Part I) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Natasha Harth for QAGOMA untitled (giran) (2018), Jonathan Jones in collaboration with Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr AM January 10, 2019 By Marcus Yee (1259 words, five-minute read) This is the first of a two-part essay on the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial running at the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia, from 24 November 2018 to 28 April 2019...
© » KADIST
Pavel Aguilar, Carlos Amorales, Jonathas de Andrade, Pavel Aguilar, Edgardo Aragón, Fredi Casco, Rometti Costales, Sam Durant, León Ferrari, Joscelyn Gardner, Beatríz González, Pierre Huyghe, Guillermo Kuitca, Cristóbal Lehyt, Jesse Lerner, Alfredo López Morales, Teresa Margolles, Noé Martínez, Cildo Meireles, Eustaquio Neves, Nohemí Pérez, Naufus Ramírez Figueroa, Antonio Reynoso, Pablo Swezey and Carla Zaccagnini...
© » KQED
Forget Tamales: Venezuelan Hallacas Are the Best Christmas Dish | KQED Skip to Nav Skip to Main Skip to Footer ¡Hella Hungry! Sorry, Tamales: Venezuelans Say Hallacas Are the Ultimate Christmas Dish Alan Chazaro Dec 15 Save Article Save Article Failed to save article Please try again Facebook Share-FB Twitter Share-Twitter Email Share-Email Copy Link Copy Link Victor Aguilera demonstrates his technique for tying up Venezuelan hallacas at a KQED live event on Dec...
© » KADIST
Rossella Biscotti
2014Rossella Biscotti’s “10×10” series investigates the relationship between demographics, data processing, textile manufacturing and social structure...
© » SLASH PARIS
Hommage à Vera Molnar — Cruciformes — MAC VAL Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne — Exhibition — Slash Paris Login Newsletter Twitter Facebook Hommage à Vera Molnar — Cruciformes — MAC VAL Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne — Exhibition — Slash Paris English Français Home Events Artists Venues Magazine Videos Back Previous Next Hommage à Vera Molnar — Cruciformes Exhibition Mixed media Vue de l’exposition Cruciformes — Hommage à Vera Molnar , MAC VAL 2024 Photo © Aurélien Mole Hommage à Vera Molnar Cruciformes Ends in about 2 months: January 5 → April 8, 2024 Le 5 janvier 2024, Vera Molnar aurait eu cent ans...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
BIPAM 2021: Delight, despair, dialogue and the despot | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints September 17, 2021 By Nabilah Said (1,800 words, 6-minute read) I’ve never actually attended the Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM)...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Weekly Picks: Malaysia (13 – 19 Aug 2018) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Weekly To Do August 13, 2018 Kenapa Tak Tukar Nama , at klpac, 18–19 Aug, 1:30pm This monologue follows Muslim convert Hoe Mei Ying as she navigates the complexity of identity and faith, and tackles a common question: Why have you not changed your name upon conversion? Yiky Chew plays five characters with various takes on the question, and is a performance devised from experiences of a convert getting her new Malaysian identity card...
© » KADIST
Matthieu Saladin
2016L’effeuillage des effacements (The Stripping of Erasures) 2016, presents a piles of posters gathered in decreasing chronological order from 2015 to 2400 B...