A Portrait of John Lennon
Working Class Hero

source: habitusliving
fter putting Michael Jackson and Madonna through a similar treatment, Candice Breitz, a South African born audio/visual artist, has turned her focus to former Beatle, John Lennon. Obsessed with the fans of these pop icons more so than the icons themselves, Breitz has created a sensory experience for viewers – 25 dedicated fans are filmed simultaneously singing the complete track list to Lennon’s lesser-known work, Plastic Ono Band.

Breitz believes that “a piece of music is never that interesting until it starts to have meaning for a particular individual, until it starts to become organically woven into a particular life.” It’s an interesting way to look at things, and flips the generally accepted view on its head. Taking the attention away from the star and onto the dedicated followers, these are the “people on the other side of the equation, those people who listen to the music, who go to the movies. The people who create an icon like Lennon.”

Her installation is a recording of 25 extremely dedicated fans who’ve sung on film the complete 39 minutes and 55 seconds of Plastic Ono Band, with songs like ‘Mother’ which, compared to his chart topping, uplifting tunes, are some of his more melancholy tracks. After advertising the project in various newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, over 900 fans from Nigeria to Argentina replied. Once 25 of the most dedicated had been selected, Breitz sent them unbiasedly into the recording studio.
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source: candicebreitznet
Candice Breitz (born in Johannesburg, 1972) is a Berlin-based artist whose moving image installations have been shown internationally. Throughout her career, she has explored the dynamics by means of which an individual becomes him or herself in relation to a larger community, be that the immediate community that one encounters in family, or the real and imagined communities that are shaped not only by questions of national belonging, race, gender and religion, but also by the increasingly undeniable influence of mainstream media such as television, cinema and other popular culture. Most recently, Breitz’s work has focused on the conditions under which empathy is produced, reflecting on a media-saturated global culture in which strong identification with fictional characters and celebrity figures runs parallel to widespread indifference to the plight of those facing real world adversity.
Breitz holds degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg), the University of Chicago and Columbia University (NYC). She has participated in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Studio Program and led the Palais de Tokyo’s ‘Le Pavillon’ residency as a visiting artist during the year 2005-2006. She has been a tenured professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig since 2007.