Breath is the cornerstone of vitality. In a year marked by chaos and disorder it is little wonder then that breath and breathing have come to charge the public consciousness: from the coronavirus emergency, a respiratory disease of the lungs, to chants of 鈥業 can鈥檛 breath鈥 following the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.
In this conversation, artist Marianna Simnett speaks with Professor Sarah Wilson about her work听Faint with Light, 2016, an audio and light installation which records the artist deliberately inducing her own unconsciousness through a self-taught method involving hyperventilation.
The work, which the artist considers a self-portrait, consists of a large metal wall housed with bars of blinding LED strips of light that rise and fall to the sound of the artist making herself faint. In dialogue with Sarah Wilson this conversation unpacks the ideas behind the work within the context of the artist鈥檚 broader practice.
Images
00:40 Marianna Simnett,听Wing-sleepers, Night Tube Map 2017. Photo: Alastair Fyfe, 2018
10:13 Marianna Simnett,听Faint with Light, 2016, SEIZURE installation view at Copenhagen Contemporary, Copenhagen, 2019. Courtesy: the artist. Photo: Anders Sune Berg
10:53 Marianna Simnett, viewers watching听Faint with Light听(2016) at Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2018. Courtesy: the artist. Photo: Tim Bowditch
11:13 Marianna Simnett, viewers watching听Faint with Light听(2016) at Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, 2019. Courtesy: the artist. Photo: Maarten Nauw
14:45听Marianna Simnett,听The Needle and the Larynx听(video still), 2016. Courtesy: the artist and Serpentine Galleries, London
21:13听Marianna Simnett,听Worst Gift听(video still), 2017. Courtesy: the artist and Matt鈥檚 Gallery
22:30 Marianna Simnett,听Birds scream at the top of their lungs in horrified hellish rage every morning at daybreak to warn us all of the truth, but sadly we don鈥檛 speak bird, 2020, Silent 鈥 Listen performance still at Engadin Art Talks, 2020. Courtesy E.A.T./ Engadin Art Talks Stiftung
23:37 Marianna Simnett,听The Bird Game听(film still), 2019. Courtesy the artist, FVU, the Rothschild Foundation and the Frans Hals Museum
29:34 Marianna Simnett,听Covering, 2020, Beyond听the Pain installation view at Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, 2020. Courtesy: the artist
Marianna Simnett is an artist living and working in Berlin. She is a graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art (MA 2013) and Nottingham Trent University (BA 2007). She has shown internationally including solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle in Z眉rich, MMK in Frankfurt and New Museum in New York.