Breathing

This sculpture, high up on the roof of the new Peel Wing of Broadcasting House, is a glass and steel construction entitled Breathing, created by the international artist Jaume Plensa.  I found ten minutes during my busy day to go out on the 7th floor balcony of Old Broadcasting House and take a photo of it for my little collection of BBC memories on Blipfoto.
 
The artwork was partly inspired by the long history of audio in this building, the home of the BBC's Radio & Music division, as it is shaped in the form of a giant listening glass.  It also creates a third spire in the trinity of spires made up by the BBC radio mast on the roof of Old Broadcasting House and the spire of the adjacent All Souls Church.
 
The words inscribed around the sculpture in a spiral of continuous text follow the opposing themes of speech and silence, life and death.  Every evening a light beam, extending far into the night sky, illuminates the sculpture for 30 minutes, at the same time as the BBC's ten o'clock news bulletin is broadcast.
 
The sculpture is dedicated to news journalists killed on location around the world.


The BBC also commissioned the following poem by ex-war correspondent and poet James Fenton -



"Memorial"
 
We spoke, we chose to speak of war and strife –
a task a fine ambition sought –
and some might say, who shared our work, our life:
that praise was dearly bought.
 
Drivers, interpreters, these were our friends.
These we loved. These we were trusted by.
The shocked hand wipes the blood across the lens.
The lens looks to the sky.
 
Most died by mischance. Some seemed honour-bound
to take the lonely, peerless track
conceiving danger as a testing ground
to which they must go back
 
till the tongue fell silent and they crossed
beyond the realm of time and fear.
Death waved them through the checkpoint. They were lost.
All have their story here.