A few months ago, I was contacted about a new project in London, asking if I wanted to meet up and potentially get involved. This was around the time my book had just been released and I had to pass on the offer. When the first Last Breath Video was released online, I immediately regretted the decision:
In a pub near King’s Cross a few weeks later, I chatted with him about what the project was about. It was an inspiring conversation. He had been working as an advertising executive for a major corporation for a few years. He felt that his creative talent was being sucked out of him to ends that were often making him uncomfortable. What he needed, he decided, was a project that would give him another outlet for creative energy and, frankly, a reason to keep getting up in the morning beyond earning a substantial paycheck. So he came up with the Last Breath project.
Last Breath is described as a series of ‘unofficial pre-demolition celebrations’. Here’s the synopsis:
London is one of the cities with the highest construction/destruction rate in the world. With this comes not only the rapid downfall of matter, but also that of memory. The only value we can add at that stage is a one-off beautification, right before a construction’s ultimate demise and characterless replacement. This is why we bring creators (of urban art, graffiti, art installations) and others together to celebrate and document. We, without permission, invade a building to ‘prepare’ it for its final liquidation. What happens after the temporary (one hour) exhibition is beyond our personal control.
I showed up last Sunday to take part in Last Breath II, in an abandoned dentist office. By the time we got there, rolled a bin up against and fence and climbed over into the property, half the art works, two days after they had been painted and installed, were already knocked down. The building was literally being eaten up by an excavator hours before we got there. Being inside the building, a space that had been enclosed for so long and then was suddenly open to the world, exposed to the elements for only the briefest period before destruction, was pretty surreal.
Climbing atop a rubble pile, I got up onto what felt like the roof but was actually the second floor. There, the convener for the project told me that he felt quite emotionally attached to these spaces after searching for them, finding them, getting into them and then inviting prominent artists to paint in them. And, he told me, that was the point. He wanted to feel the pain of the loss, to pay respect to the space in a constantly-shifting city – and the better the art the more interesting the space, the more poignant the pain.
I became fast friends with the organiser of Last Breath, who has now quit his advertising job to pursue the project full time. It has has now moved onto another city and will begin travelling around the globe over the Spring and Summer. I find myself really moved by the gift the project offers to buildings in their final moments.
After a long hiatus on this blog, it’s great to finally have something worth writing about. So here’s to you my bold new friend, wherever you are, I look forward to seeing the next iteration of the project!
