The ‘Working Class Hero‘ exhibition by Candice Breitz is an exhibitions that made a lasting impression on me; it was an amazing and paralysing experience, it brought a new dimensions to John Lennon’s album ‘Plastic Ono Band’ and it’s a constantly reappearing as a very found memory.
I don’t know exactly when I saw it, but it was showed between the 10th October 2006 and the 28th January 2007 at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Newcastle-upon-Tyne Gateshead.
Below is the description.
Taken from balticmill.com.
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 video installation, with a looping duration of 39 minutes and 55 seconds (matching the length of the original album), will be displayed on 25 plasma screens that are 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.
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.