Breakdown (2011), a video collaboration between artists Simone Leigh and Liz Magic Laser with opera singer Alicia Hall Moran, explores the history of psychological “breakdowns” on stage and screen. Bearing witness to Moran’s operatic, tense repetition of mundane phrases – her voice and movements jerking and teetering as if on a razor’s edge – the film provides a rare, sanctioned glimpse of a black female in emotional crisis over the familiar pressures of everyday life. The viewer’s resulting discomfort is also an opportunity for empathy, and a reframing of the social discourse around black women and hysteria in popular culture.
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