Sgt. Peppers' BROKEN Hearts Club Band

The Break-Up

NEW YORK, NY.- We are standing on a roof, looking down over the ledge from atop a five-story building. It is a northern winter. Cold. One has to wonder if any of the four men thought to jump, as a curious crowd began to assemble, with bystanders gazing upward… 3 Savile Row. London. January 30th, 1969. The last public appearance of a cultural phenomenon called The Beatles transpired for a brief forty-five minutes during lunch that day. By this time, they had ceased to exist as a unified entity. Indeed, they had over the past three years collapsed and separated into four individuals, each their own nation state: One Paul, one John, one Ringo, one George… So begins Michael Rakowitz’s The Breakup, a ten-part radio series originally commissioned by Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem, in 2010 for a Palestinian station in Ramallah.

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