Tag Archives: public space
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Tonnes of carbon produced by the personal transportation of a ‘professional artist’
This graph was first compiled as the central illustration of Harrison’s 2019 book The Glasgow Effect: A Tale of Class, Capitalism & Carbon Footprint to illustrate the artist’s increasing amount of travel in the years running up to her 2016 project and the dramatic impact it had on reducing her carbon footprint for transport. It was updated in 2020 for display at Edinburgh Art Festival.
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This Is What Democracy Looks Like!
We live in a liberal democracy, yet how much power do we really have to decide the direction of our country? “This Is What Democracy Looks Like!” gives you the opportunity to meet & greet your newly elected politicians at a roving roundtable discussion upon a bicycle built for seven. Hop on, decide on your direction and then travel together through the Olympic Park whilst discussing the issues that matter to you with the people in power.
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High Street Casualties: Ellie Harrison’s Zombie Walk
A performance / event in collaboration with Ort Gallery staged on Birmingham’s busy shopping streets. Dressed as “zombie employees”, more than 60 participants helped to map the former locations of thirteen of the big retail chains which have disappeared from our high streets since the start of the financial crisis in 2008.
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The Global Race
The Global Race is an absurd vision of an Olympic games of the future, in which the brilliance of human ‘innovation‘ means we no longer need to break a sweat! At an athletics track in central Berlin, a group of ‘elite athletes’ and members of the public competed in a series of races on Segways.
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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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Fair Game
An experiment in ‘value’ devised specifically for the context of the art fair. Fair Game is an endurance performance which sees Harrison gamble her entire artist’s fee for the project with fair goers, by setting-up and running a hoopla stall within the fair grounds.
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Work-a-thon for the Self-Employed
Work-a-thon for the Self-Employed is a world record classification initiated by Harrison in 2011. It aims to encourage isolated freelance workers like herself to come together to attempt to break the record for ‘the most self-employed people working together (on their own individual projects) in the same place at the same time, over the course of a normal 9-to-5 day’.
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Early Warning Signs
One of Harrison’s contributions to Two Degrees festival in 2011 and now on a life-long tour of UK arts venues. These four signs were designed to mimic those you might find outside a garage or a Bureau de Change. On a mission ‘promote’ climate change, they try hard to grab the attention of passers-by.
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The History of Revolution: Ellie Harrison’s Fireworks Display
Conceived as the sister work to The History of Financial Crises, this performance spectacle is a one-woman attempt to re-enact a chronology of ‘the history of revolution’ over the course of the last 360 years via the medium of pyrotechnics.
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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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Desk Chair Parade
On Sunday 2 August 2009, Ellie Harrison & Adele Prince (Sports Day) staged the inaugural Desk Chair Parade took place in Manchester as part of We are the Champions – Castlefield Gallery’s 25th Anniversary. A group of willing volunteers – office workers, shoppers and gallery goers alike – embarked on a magnificent adventure, freewheeling through the streets on ordinary office chairs.
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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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Gold Card Adventures
For her solo exhibition at Piccadilly Circus Underground Station in 2005, Harrison created a series of 20 large format posters to visualise the data collected during her Gold Card Adventures project, for which she recorded the total distance of every journey she made on London Transport in a year (9,236 kilometres). These posters were used to mark the stages of this cumulative journey by featuring a series of imitation postcards from different global destinations at progressive further distances away from London.
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Statistics Are Hot Air
This colour-coded vinyl bar chart visualises the exact quantity of gaseous emissions Harrison produced daily throughout 2003. Originally created in 2003 as a studio based wall chart exploring the notion of ‘artistic output’, for which Harrison added one bar to the chart each day. In 2007 the completed chart was installed as semi-permanent installation on glass at Birmingham Moor Street Station as part the New Art Birmingham exhibition Ariston. There is also an online version of the chart.