For three-and-a-half years Harrison was ‘undercover artist-in-residence’ at Broadway Cinema in Nottingham. Assuming the role of usher, she spent her shifts getting to grips with the inner workings of the cinema and expanding her knowledge of contemporary film. After ‘coming out’ as an artist in 2007, she was asked to present her findings as one of the commissions for the launch of Digital Broadway – the cinema’s new digital arts programme alongside works by Marcus Coates, Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie and Annie Watson.
Project website
From 17 November 2003 – 7 June 2007, Harrison was ‘undercover artist-in-residence’ at Broadway Cinema in Nottingham. By surreptitiously taking on the role of part-time usher, she managed to gain a valuable insight into the inner workings of the cinema. As well as vastly expanding her knowledge of contemporary film, she also learnt a great deal about the idiosyncrasies of Broadway’s staff and punters.
To record the time she spent in this role, Harrison kept a record of every film she watched whilst on shift. For this specially commissioned screen-based work she created an animated notebook which documents these films one-by-one. Anecdotes from shifts, plot synopses and film ratings and displayed alongside the increasing cumulative time, which after three-and-a-half years and 207 films, amounts to more than 16 days of solid viewing.
I’ve Been Watching You was screened continuously in the Broadway Cafébar from 14 June – 31 July 2007. It then toured to Showroom Cinema in Sheffield from 1 – 31 August and finally to Filmhuis Den Haag from 20 – 22 September where it formed part of Todaysart Festival 2007.
In August 2006, Harrison officially ‘gave up’ data collecting. I’ve Been Watching You was her final major project based on data collected about her everyday routine. Since 9 November 2010, Harrison has been volunteering as a part-time usher at Glasgow Film Theatre, where she normally works one evening a week including working 36 shifts during The Glasgow Effect in 2016.
