Time was when the main
event for Hogmanay in Edinburgh saw revellers gather en masse outside
the Tron Kirk on the corner of the High Street where the bells would
be seen in with inebriated abandon. This pilgrimage to the
seventeenth century landmark built at the behest of Charles 1
continued long after the Tron closed as a church in 1952, and only
since the rise of large-scale Hogmanay events in the last twenty
years did the tradition go into decline as the focus moved to Princes
Street.
This year sees an
attempt to revive the spirit of old Tron Kirk gatherings in the form
of something styled as A Festival of the Extraordinary. Initiated and
backed by the Drambuie drinks company, this three day event runs from
the night before to the morning after Hogmanay, and aims to bridge
elements of the new year's tradition both old and new. This is done
with a mixture of film screenings and performances in the daytime
under the banner of The Drambuie Surreal Sessions, while the evenings
are given over to club nights dubbed The Extraordinary Drambuie
Gatherings.
The event's main visual
focus will be a series of large-scale custom-built projections by
Edinburgh-based digital artist and designer, Andy McGregor. His
starting point is the iconography of
Surrealism, an art-form
that is both subversively serious while remaining fun enough to be
user-friendly.
“It's a genre I
love,” McGregor says, “and when this job came up I already had
all the books on my shelf. If you look at Drambuie's recent ad
campaign there are clear nods to Salvador Dali's dream sequence for
Alfred Hitchcock's film, Spellbound, so that's a good starting
point.”
Images should include
umbrellas raining from the inside, while a photo booth will project
users' digitally realigned, portraits. A main theme will be following
seventy-two hours in the life of a Hogmanay reveller.
“It's basically a 360
degree skyline of Edinburgh, but with things happening that you
wouldn't normally expect,” McGregor says. “I've filmed a journey
through Edinburgh in different ways which people will be able to
interact with, and make it strange or not strange as they move it
backwards or forwards.”
This will be operated
by a set of kinetic mittens.
Films featured at the
9am free-to-enter screenings will include Tron, Whisky Galore and
Hangover, while clubland institutions including Ultragroove take over
at night. The original plan was that films would be shown using a
vintage projector purloined from Glasgow's old Grosvenor cinema. At
time of writing, however, such is the projector's fragile state that
transporting it between cities may well prove too delicate an
operation for it to survive intact.
Working in The Tron's
grand interior has left problems too for the team of 3D and 2D
animators McGregor has drafted in to bring his vision to life.
“It's an incredible
space,” he says, “but it's not without it's challenges. There are
stained-glass windows which we can't touch, so although it's a
400-foot canvas, there are places we have to work around. We're going
to project onto the raw walls, so we're composing for the space
rather than taking a straight cinematic approach.”
With a background in
international theatre with the likes of dance theatre company Bock
and Vincenzi, McGregor is used to straddling the worlds of art and
commerce in the way A Festival of the Extraordinary is attempting to
do. By taking something with a fine art root and giving it a civic
context, it may be a long way from 1950s celebrations at the Tron,
but it retains a similarly populist draw.
“This is definitely
crowd-pleasing stuff,” says McGregor, “and there's absolutely
nothing wrong with that.”
A Festival of the
Extraordinary, Tron Kirk, Edinburgh, December 30th-January 1st
http://www.drambuie.com/age-verification#extraordinary-event,
http://www.seetickets.com/Tour/THE-EXTRAORDINARY-DRAMBUIE-GATHERINGS
The Herald, December 28th 2012
ends
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