food - Ellie Harrison

Writing

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)
Performance / Events

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.
Lectures

Ethics: Extremism & Compromise

A talk by Ellie Harrison exploring the relationship between her life choices and her work as an artist for Artquest’s Practice 360° programme at Camden Arts Centre in London.
Writing

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)
Performance / Events

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.
Project website
Installations

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.
Installations

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.
Installations

Mass = Energy = Time

This kinetic installation uses two found weight mechanism clocks. The lead weights which are normally used to power the clocks have been removed and replaced by foods (bread and bananas) of the same mass. The clocks continue to work as normal – powered by the gravitational potential energy inherent in the foods. Originally installed at Goldsmiths College in 2002 and then at the Colony in Birmingham in 2004.
Installations

TicTac Typing & Peanut Typing

This installation features two Mac computer programmes made during the LabCulture digital arts residency in 2002. The programmes mimic the common typing test, but rather than telling you your speed or accuracy, they inform you of the equivalent number of TicTacs or peanuts you are burning off whilst typing. Bowls of TicTacs and peanuts are installed alongside the two Macs for hungry participants.
Internet / Broadcasts

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. Eat 22 is now on permanent display at the Wellcome Collection in London.
Project website
Installations

Potential Generator

Created in 2001 for Harrison’s Degree Show at Nottingham Trent University, this kinetic sculpture is designed to give gravitational potential energy to apples. Apples are placed on the escalator device at the rear of the bike and, when pedalled, are transported to a height above the ground proportional to their chemical energy content. A similar, proportionally larger, Potential Generator for doughnuts was also designed.
Installations

Kinetic Cake vs Kinetic Carrot

A kinetic installation created by Harrison in December 2000 whilst studying at Nottingham Trent University. As a precursor to Potential Generator, this installation visualises the energy content of a carrot and a chocolate éclair, by racing them around two facing train tracks at equivalent speeds – the éclair being just over three times faster than the vegetable of a comparable size.
Installations

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.
Internet / Broadcasts

Greed

Harrison’s obsession with data collecting – documenting elements of her own everyday life – began in New York City 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.
Project website

Ellie Harrison Louise Haigh and Labour say that they will reform the complex fares system to ensure that passengers are confident that they are getting the best fare; confidence that X is the case, and X being the case are not necessarily the same thing. Simplification of fares would have to include the abolition of many fares. The assertion that simplifying the fares structure would reduce travelling costs is based upon a false premise, that being that the complicated-ness of the fares-and-ticketing structure is the reason why fares are expensive, that is not why they are expensive. They are expensive because the base level is too high. If you massively simplify the fares, one might then always be certain of getting the best available fare because there are no obscure cheaper fare hidden away in a Byzantine monolith, but that best fare is likely the best of a bad bunch. Railway fares are complicated, but it is within this myriad complexity that the nuances which facilitate cheaper options lurk; if you take a sledgehammer to the behemoth you bring down the cheaper options which lurk within the behemoth. If there are presently 18 options for doing Thing X, with 15 of those ways being cheap, and 3 of those ways being expensive, if you abolish the 15 cheap options for doing thing X you have massively simplified the paying-to-do-Thing X process because having 3 ways is much simpler than having 18 ways, and you have made it such that one is highly unlikely to not notice the cheapest of the available fares, because one is more likely to notice something when it is one amongst 3 than if it is one amongst 18, but it is nevertheless the case that the person is selecting the cheapest of the 3 most expensive. (i) Being guaranteed to always get the best fare; and (ii). getting cheaper fares are not necessarily the same thing. Be mindful of the actual specific wording of things: both before and after coming into government, Labour has never in actually promised cheaper fares, what Labour has promised is that one will be guaranteed to get the best available fare. The general public, politicians and public-transport campaign organisations alike have been seduced by the word 'simplification'. Simplification is not a virtue in and of itself. Simplification is a neutral concept, neither a good thing nor a bad thing; what is pertinent and important is the nature of the simplification. One can simplify travelling costs upwards. Simplification can simplify out the cheaper options. I deliberately say 'travelling costs', not 'fares', because thinking only terms of fares when it comes to simplification of railway fares and ticketing, and when it comes to Single-Leg Pricing is a proverbial red herring, one should think both in terms of fares AND in terms of travelling costs. Fare decreases do not necessarily mean travelling-cost. LNER is a prime example: with the June of 2023 introduction of Single-Leg Pricing on LNER, and the February of 2024 introduced of the Simpler Fares pilot, travelling costs for using LNER have gone up. Two halved-in-price Singles are more expensive than one Day Return; a fare reduction, but a travelling-cost increase. The changes December of 2023 fares-and-ticketing changes on c2c have many of the same fare-decreases-but-travelling-cost increases as LNER, plus its pay-as-you-go tap-in-tap-out integration with Transport for London (to simplify things) has necessitated the introduction of a weekday early-evening peak period between 4.00 p.m. and 7.00 p.m., which has numerous knock-on effects which can hugely increase one's travelling costs. The answer is not reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is not simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is to decrease the price of all existing fares. Do not abolish any existing fares. Do not introduce any new types of fare. Just make all existing fares 45% cheaper, and leave it at that.

As the idiom goes: 'Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true'. Reform will only be good if it is good reform. We don't need reform, we need good reform. Some might fear that prices would inevitably be rationalised upwards. Inevitably, the rationalisation would rationalise out the cheaper options. Some might fear that reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, reform travelling costs upwards, and reform out the cheaper options. Some might fear that simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, simplify travelling costs upwards, and simplify out the cheaper options. Just take a look at LNER. Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true.