One (with Ian Breakwell)

A film by Mike Leggett of an event at Angela Flowers Gallery produced by Ian Breakwell during 1971 in which a group of labourers shovelled earth over the course of an ‘8-hour day’, to celebrate the first anniversary of the gallery. On the second floor of the gallery, each man continuously shovelled earth onto the adjacent man’s mound of earth, while at the same time and by coincidence, the Apollo astronauts were digging up rock samples on the surface of the moon. While every TV shop window showed live footage of the activities on the moon, the media installation relayed the event via CCTV to their street-level window. Gradually through the course of the day, as the all-white gallery space was reduced to a sea of mud, the pictures relayed from each event became almost indistinguishable from each other. The 16mm film record was restored to digital video in 2003.