Performance / Events
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Bus Regulation: The Musical (Merseyside)
The final part of Harrison’s Bus Regulation: The Musical Trilogy – inspired by the 1980s hit musical ‘Starlight Express’ – re-enacts the history of public transport provision in the Merseyside region from the post-war period to the present day… on roller skates!
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Bus Regulation: The Musical (Strathclyde)
The second iteration of Harrison’s Bus Regulation: The Musical – inspired by the 1980s hit musical ‘Starlight Express’ – re-enacts the history of public transport provision in the Strathclyde region from the post-war period to the present day… on roller skates!
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Bus Regulation: The Musical (Greater Manchester)
Inspired by the 1980s hit musical ‘Starlight Express’, this performance / event re-enacts the history of public transport provision in Greater Manchester from the post-war period to the present day… on roller skates!
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The Elephant in the Room
As part of Panic! It’s an Arts Emergency Harrison was commissioned to make a new work using their research into inequality in the arts as a starting point. In April 2018, Harrison invited 50 participants from the Creative & Cultural Industries and beyond to take part in a Power & Privilege Workshop in London, to explore how these hidden forces in society affect all our lives.
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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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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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There’s nothing More Unequal than Equality amongst Unequals
A performance / installation exploring the different interpretations of the concept of ‘equality’ favoured by different parts of the political spectrum. On Friday 3 July 2015, a diverse group of six people took part in a simple performance at g39 in Cardiff – standing on a series of special plinths designed to raise each person up to an equal level, so that together they formed a perfect line.
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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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Dark Days
An ‘experiment in communal living’, this event offered one hundred participants the unique opportunity to stay the night in the great hall of the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow as part of a pop-up community.
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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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Transition Community of One
Devised in 2014 in response to Glasgow Open House Arts Festival, this special event at Harrison’s flat in Glasgow aimed to expose the paradox at the heart of her lifestyle and challenge her actually existing ‘socialism in one person’. Monthly screenings continued in 2016 as part of The Glasgow Effect.
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Attempt at an Inventory…
Created specially for The Hospital for Dazed Art exhibition, for which artists were asked to revisit and rescue old or discarded artworks, Attempt at an Inventory… is Harrison’s attempt to take account of all the creative production she was responsible for in her formative years, exhibited alongside her first known self-portrait.
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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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Relentless Innovation
Devised by Harrison for the The List Hot 100 Party at the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh after being voted No.93 in this annual list of Scotland’s ‘creative talent’. A ‘propaganda striptease’ of sorts, this artist’s talk / performance attempts to address the relentless innovation cycles such hitlists celebrate, and to explore the detrimental impact this obsession with the new might have on our mental health and the world around us.