A ten-part radio series charting the rise and fall of The Beatles and the uncanny parallels of their demise with that of Pan-Arabism, The Breakup by Michael Rakowitz will stream from the Jameel’s website, enabling audiences far and wide to listen at home while the Jameel Arts Centre is temporarily closed.

Currently installed in the Jameel Arts Centre’s Gallery 9, as part of survey show ‘Michael Rakowitz’, The Breakup is a multifaceted work including a video, a live performance, objects and a radio series tracing parallels between the slow demise of The Beatles and the failure of the Pan- Arab project. Working from a complete set of the 150-hour audio tapes generated during the shooting of Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s documentary Let It Be, Rakowitz created a series of cascading narratives of the rise and fall of The Beatles, pinpointing the precise moment when alienation and isolation gave way to collapse.

The ten-part radio series was originally broadcast on Radio Amwaj in Ramallah as part of the Jerusalem Show IV and is brought together here with a portion of the vitrines bringing together objects and stories related to these two overlapping histories.

The stream will be accompanied by images of the works from The Breakup series.

About Michael Rakowitz

Michael Rakowitz (b.1973) lives and works in Chicago. Michael has had numerous solo and group exhibitions, and is the 2020 laureate of the Nasher Prize for Sculpture, in recognition of his vision of sculpture’s possibilities in the face of political and humanitarian crises.

The exhibition is co-organised by Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, and Whitechapel Gallery, London, in collaboration Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai