Work
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What If… Artists Redesigned Economics?
Sustain Talks at Royal College of Art, London. Noel Douglas from Occupy Design UK, artist Ellie Harrison, and James Meadway and Ruth Potts from the New Economics Foundation discuss the failure of capitalism to deliver on social and environmental wellbeing, and explore the structures that might be, redefining economic parameters. Chaired by Cecilia Wee, RCA. Visual Communication graduate 2012, Livia Lima presents her work on alternative currencies.
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21 Revolutions
Talk given by Harrison – in full Roller Derby attire – at Glasgow Women’s Library on 22 March 2012, where she discusses the ideas and hobbies, which developed into her founding of the National Museum of Roller Derby that June.
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Ellie & Oliver Show
For a whole year, artists, friends and flatmates Ellie Harrison & Oliver Braid worked together to broadcast a weekly radio show LIVE from their flat in Glasgow (and from a variety of special locations across the UK and Ireland including Edinburgh Art Festival and Glasgow International).
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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.
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Best of the Rest
The final instalment in her series of 4 LIVE Broadcasts made over the course of a year (December 2010 – November 2011). Harrison draws on recurring themes from her previous broadcasts, to introduce the ideas behind Oliver Braid’s exhibition I’ll Look Forward To It and tell the story of her own work-life successes and failures in 2011. (Duration: 27:50)
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Desk Chair Disco
Ellie Harrison & Adele Prince (Sports Day) staged the first ever Desk Chair Disco in Newcastle upon Tyne on Friday 4 November 2011. City dwellers were offered the opportunity to redress their work-life balance by reclaiming their ordinary office furniture and taking it out on the town. As part of Wunderbar festival, Sports Day were invited to take over an empty office unit in the Pandon Building and put on this ‘roller disco with a difference’. The evening featured disco lights, DJ sets, live music and daring Desk Chair Derby displays courtesy of the Newcastle Roller Girls.
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Austerity & Anarchy
An installation which employs a spotlight and smoke machine to visualise and explore the correlation between cuts in public spending and instances of mass rioting on the UK’s streets.
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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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A Good Climate for Business
Written by Harrison for Artsadmin in response to her residency at Two Degrees festival in 2011. This text details her attempts to explore the relationship between capitalism and climate change, which led to the development of Work-a-thon for the Self-Employed and Early Warning Signs. (Word count: 2,758)
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The Artists’ Bond
Harrison is the Agent for this life-long speculative funding scheme for UK-based artists. The Artists’ Bond was established in 2011 by the forty members of the Artists’ Lottery Syndicate (which ran from 1 July 2010 – 1 July 2011), who together chose to re-invest their annual winnings in a new collective venture devised to create a bond between them over the course of their careers.
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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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Personal Political Broadcast
For the third of 4 LIVE Broadcasts made over the course of a year (December 2010 – November 2011), Harrison explores the impact of political devolution on her own personal identity. Using a variety of regional accents, Harrison interprets the systems of government in use in Scotland, Wales and the wider UK, in order to make the case for electoral reform. (Duration: 14:38)
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UK Weather Report
For the second of 4 LIVE Broadcasts made over the course of a year (December 2010 – November 2011), Harrison interprets the unusually cold weather experienced in the UK in December 2010. By observing the short-term impact these conditions had on retail sales in the run-up to Christmas, she raises questions about the long-term effect of capitalism on climate change. (Duration: 10:30)
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Trajectories
Trajectories is a web-based application which enables you to compare your life to other people’s and test how you match up against their achievements. Enter your details and watch your career trajectory visualised alongside those of your heroes or rivals from the past and present. Check to see if you are still on track for ‘success’ and schedule email reminders for future dates to remind you of your goals.
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A Brief History of Privatisation
An installation in which the oscillations in UK public service policy over the last century are re-enacted by an inner circle of electric massage chairs under the seedy glow of red, and then blue, neon.
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Artists Anonymous
Artists Anonymous was a support group for Glasgow-based artists co-founded, coordinated and attended by Harrison over the course of two years. It took place every three weeks at the CCA in Glasgow and aimed to provide a ‘safe space for its members to speak candidly, honestly and confidentially to others about the anxieties and stresses of their professional lives’.
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How to Reconcile the Careerist Mentality with our Impending Doom
27 Jan 2011
Edinburgh College of Art -
Transmission: Glasgow to London
For the first of 4 LIVE Broadcasts made over the course of a year (December 2010 – November 2011), Harrison gives a rambling exploration of ethical compromise and political contradiction. Questioning how a person’s moral outlook and priorities may shift with age, she offers an insight into the life of a home-owning thirty-something in devolved Scotland. (Duration: 18:00)
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One Minute Manifesto
9 Oct 2010
AHM Symposium, University of Glasgow -
Artists’ Lottery Syndicate
On 1 April 2010, Harrison launched the Artists’ Lottery Syndicate forming a forty-strong collective of UK based artists joining forces to play The National Lottery over the course of a year, with the hope of hitting the jackpot. The Syndicate ran from 1 July 2010 – 1 July 2011 and was a fun and social group activity, which operated as a gentle critique of artists’ relationships to the economy, as well as a potential money-maker.
Project website