over-consumption
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The Glasgow Effect: A Tale of Class, Capitalism & Carbon Footprint
On 4 November 2019, Luath Press published Harrison’s first book. Inspired by her 2016 ‘durational performance’ The Glasgow Effect – for which she refused to travel beyond Glasgow’s city limits, or use any vehicles except her bike, for the whole calendar year – the book provides the complete context for her thinking and action. (Word count: 119,000)
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The Glasgow Effect
The Glasgow Effect was a multi-layered ‘research project‘, which took place in 2016. Its central provocation was that Harrison would refuse to travel beyond Glasgow’s city limits, or use any vehicles except her bike, for a whole calendar year (1 January – 31 December 2016). On 8 January 2017, she gave a talk about the work at the Glasgow Film Theatre. On 4 November 2019, she published a book providing the complete context for her thinking and action.
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Eat 22: The Personal is Political
One decade on, Harrison reflects on her seminal 2002 project Eat 22, and examines her persistent interest in ‘consumption‘ in recent works: Vending Machine, The Other Forecast and Anti-Capitalist Aerobics. An edited version of this text was published in the ‘Food Growing‘ chapter of Playing For Time (p.177-179) in 2015. (Word count: 692)
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Anti-Capitalist Aerobics
Originally created as a disruption during Invisible Dust’s Ways of Seeing Climate Change conference on 30 October 2013, Anti-Capitalist Aerobics engages delegates in an energy intensive workout in order to expose some of the fundamental contradictions in the way we live our lives.
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The Other Forecast
Recorded LIVE in front of a green screen, Harrison’s The Other Forecast offers her summary of the absurd consequences of capitalism, as a warning about the future we are heading towards if the system continues unchecked. Broadcast on the Big Screen at MediaCityUK in November 2013 as part of The Other Forecast project – a collaboration between Harrison & John O’Shea.
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General Election Drinking Game
An endurance performance devised by Harrison to coincide with the 2010 UK general election. Four ‘players’ represented the main political parties – each attempting to drink one shot of lager for every seat in parliament their party won, live as the results came in throughout the night.
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Vending Machine
An installation for which an old vending machine is reprogrammed to release snacks only when news relating to the recession makes the headlines on the BBC News RSS feed.
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The History of Financial Crises
An installation in which the turbulent history of capitalism over the last century is re-enacted each day by a row of popcorn making machines.
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Olympic Ring Doughnut Eating Contest
Harrison collaborated with Adele Prince as Sports Day on the Olympic Ring Doughnut Eating Contest on Saturday 15 September 2007 at Burgess Park in south London as part the second Artists’ Sports Day organised by Grunts for the Arts. The Artists’ Sports Days are organised as a protest against the recent siphoning off of 35% or the Arts Council Grants for the Arts funds in order to pay for the 2012 Olympics.
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Eat 22
A year after completing Greed, Harrison began Eat 22 (11 March 2001 – 11 March 2002), her seminal data collecting project. For one year and one day she photographed and recorded information about everything that she ate. In 2007, Eat 22 was acquired by the Wellcome Collection in London.
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Superfluous Consumption
Harrison’s first interactive installation (created in December 2000 whilst studying at Nottingham Trent University) draws an analogy between the unnecessary energy we consume in snack foods and that consumed by the electrical appliances we use for entertainment and comfort in our homes. The viewer is invited into an arm chair to watch various snack foods appear on a TV screen for durations equivalent to their energy content.
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Greed
Harrison’s obsession with data collecting – documenting elements of her own everyday life – began in New York in February 2000 with Greed. During a four-day visit to the city, Harrison challenged herself to eat as much as was humanly possible and to document everything single last bit.
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