Anne Brodie

Breathing Berg (2007)

Breathing Berg is one of a series of short films made by artist Anne Brodie as a result of an Arts Council and British Antarctic Survey sponsored residency in Antarctica.

Most of the information coming out of Antarctica is scientific data monitoring the rate and implications of climate change, it is rigorously devoid of subjectivity. Brodie says she felt a freedom as an artist to explore creatively the extraordinary world around her, whilst being aware that the environment needed very little in the way of intervention, it already had its own voice; all it needed was a quiet witness.

Most people watching Breathing Berg for the first time make an assumption that it has been digitally manipulated. We have grown so accustomed to the slick tricks of the advertising industry that we find it hard to believe that something so unworldly can in fact be real. Brodie explains, “my part in making the film was to be a bystander with a film camera and make the decision to overlay the sound of an elephant seal breathing on land. Antarctica is a hard place in which to be a human being and I wanted to reflect this without being too interventionary.”


_{Image: Breathing Berg (still) © Anne Brodie}