Northern Lights 2

Lumiere Durham provided an entertaining trip to the North East this month, with sound and light interventions across the city, commissioned by Arthichoke Productions.

Obviously, some installations did more for me than others, but I loved the idea of transforming an evening walk around this historic city.  I was reminded how important it is with site-specific art to have a strong starting point, which Durham's geography and architecture certainly provided.

One of the best elements of the event was 'Power Plant', a show in the Botanic Gardens produced by Simon Chatterton, centred on the work of the brilliant Mark Anderson, and originally commissioned by Oxford Contemporary Music.  A succession of sound and light installations took you on a surreal journey through the darkened gardens. 

The clear crowd-pleaser was Mark's 'Pyrophones' - a surround-sound fire organ. This is what it looked like in Liverpool last year:





Back in Durham's city centre, I was surprised to find that one of my favourite pieces was actually sited indoors, within the Cathedral.  'Chorus' by Mira Calix and United Visual Artists was a beautiful piece of music played through four static speakers and eight speaker/lights housed in pendulums that swayed and paused overhead, as the audience passed beneath them.  I sat in a pew and watched the whole piece twice:





The North East can't be accused of not being ambitious in terms of large-scale outdoor arts events - next up is an illumination of the 87-mile Hadrian's Wall on 13 March 2010.

But for me the most poignant piece in Lumiere Durham was this simple light sculpture, produced from a drawing made by a prisoner at HMP Durham.  How I take my freedoms for granted.

http://www.artichoke.uk.com/

Endangered Species

Thanks to the Children and Nature network on twitter for pointing me towards this clip on You Tube:  a wildlife documentary that manages to film a few children in their natural habitat:  the last children in the woods.





Of course it's all good fun, but it strikes me that there's a connection to be made.  As the population of outdoor children plummets towards extinction, more and more adults emerge disconnected from the natural environment and find it harder to perceive the effects of climate change, pollution and species loss that ultimately threaten humanity.  So my hypothesis is that a trend in the population of outdoor children could predict a trend in the population of homo sapiens.


Ultimately, re-connecting children with nature is not altruistic.  There are billions of other planets, but my DNA is stuck on this one.

Northern Lights

I drove up to Yorkshire a week ago for the last night of 'Odin's Glow', a public art event set in the village of Newton-Under-Roseberry.

The event comprised illuminations of Roseberry Topping, the mountain that overlooks the village, together with a number of installations and performances in the streets and spaces below, pedestrianised for the four nights of the show. 

The event celebrated the Viking heritage of the area - Roseberry Topping is an anglisation of the Norse for Odin's Rock. So lots of runes and audio re-telling of Norse myths.  In an odd bit of artistic direction, the event also covered the life of Caption Cook, who once lived there too.  This made the evening feel a bit schizophrenic for me - the themes didn't really come together very well, and in my view a flawed compromise had been made somewhere in the planning process.

However, it was great to walk through a rural village at night, transformed with light and sound, and the sense of occasion was palpable, even if some of the installations were a little underwhelming.

The star of the show was unquestionably the mountain of Roseberry Topping itself, dramatically illuminated by Filament, and stopping crowds at every spot in the village from which it was visible.  An unforgettable sight. 

Most photos from http://www.flickr.com/photos/blue-don/ - many thanks.

http://www.odinsglow.co.uk/