Heartbeat/Armpit
Heartbeat/Armpit (2003) is a looped digital video just under two and a half minutes long and with no sound, a rare format in Tillmans’s artistic world. At first glance, this piece with its stringent composition and seeming calm seems to resemble a photograph. What we see is a cropped section of an angled overhead shot of a young man lying bare chested on a carpet.On closer inspection minimal movements can be discerned within this harmonious composition. These minute movements attest to the fact that he is alive: we intuit his breath and heartbeat from the fact that his chest rises and falls gently, and the artery in his neck pulsates.
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Not on any streaming service in United States, and not available to rent.
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Wolfgang Tillmans Director
United States release January 1, 2003 · Produced in Germany
Production
Germany
Produced in
Languages
Original language
English
Spoken on screen
No dialogue
Release dates
United States · January 1, 2003
Digital
United States
September 14, 2015 · Digital · David Zwirner Art Gallery
September 12, 2022 · Digital · MoMA – Museum of Modern Art, New York
Germany
July 4, 2018 · Digital · Julia Stoschek Collection (Düsseldorf)
More from Wolfgang Tillmans
Other films they directed, best known first.