When novelist Alasdair
Gray suggested that we should 'Work as if you were in the early days
of a better nation' on the frontispiece of his 1983 short-story
collection, Unlikely Stories, Mostly, the landscape he imagined might
have looked and sounded a little like Scot:Lands. The New Year's Day
centrepiece of Edinburgh's Hogmanay programme, Scot:Lands presents a
microcosm of Scottish music and performance that both looks to its
cultural roots for inspiration while remaining utterly contemporary
as it is performed in the throbbing heart of the capital city.
With nine unnamed but
iconic venues in Edinburgh's Old Town hosting some imagined new
'Land', each features a rolling programme of international artists
curated by venues and figureheads from a particular area. So where
High:Land will be run by The Ceilidh House venue in Ullapool,
Heid:Land will be curated by The Pathhead Music Collective from Fife.
While the former will feature the likes of radical folk legend Dick
Gaughan and Nancy Nicolson, the latter will host a bill that includes
Karine Polwart and Sophie Bancroft. Lobster:Land, meanwhile, finds
Fence Collective founder King Creosote recreating the East Neuk of
Fife, with all the area's musical delights that helped put Fence on
the map.
Theatrically speaking,
while Wander:Land will feature Dundee-based contemporary dance
company Smallpetitklein performing to a live Philip Glass soundtrack,
Shadow:Land finds dynamic actor and director Cora Bissett presenting
a miniature version of Whatever Gets You Through The Night, her music
and theatre collaboration with playwright David Greig, electronic duo
Swimmer One and a host of others. With the venue where each audience
member promenades to decided I Ching-like by the pick of a card,
Scot:Lands makes for a bespoke set of performances that are as far
away from a normal gig as one can imagine, as Edinburgh's Hogmanay
director and head of Unique Events, Pete Irvine, explains.
“Edinburgh's
Hogmanay's not just a street party,” he says. “It's a festival
where we promote the work of Scottish artists to an international
audience. Every year we try and do something different, usually
focusing on the Old Town. In the past we've had international street
theatre quite a lot, and last year we did a thing called Your Lucky
Day, where people threw a dice to go to one of eleven different
venues to see a single artist doing a specific thing. That was sort
of based on the New Year Games, which we'd done the year before in
four venues, and which finished with a giant football game in the
Grassmarket.
“When something
works, there's a temptation to repeat it, but we always want to try
something different. The idea for Scot:Lands came from the band Lau,
who next year are going to be doing a thing called Lau:Land. That
idea of lands seemed to mirror this whole idea of 2014 being
Scotland's big year, so Lau became part of this world they've
imagined and interpreted as theirs. We wanted to imagine lands that
relate geographically and metaphorically, so the idea became about
place, and how a place inspires you or nurtures you or introduces
you. We then decided we wanted to work with existing arts centres,
and to have a range of things across nine venues that would allow
curators to put on something special.”
As well as those
already mentioned, these will range from a recreation of a Shetland
folk session to Edinburgh art collective FOUND hosting an
in-the-round candle-lit musical performance. For Cora Bissett,
Shadow:Land may be a very different world to the Arches in Glasgow
where Whatever Gets You Through The Night was first performed, but
it's something she can use to her advantage.
“The show's always
been fluid,” she explains, “with different songwriters coming in
at different points when they're available. The whole thing's like a
bit of a jigsaw that you can move about and do it in a boutique
fashion if you need to.”
While a variation of
Alasdair Gray's epigraph – 'Work as if you live in the early days
of a better nation' - is engraved on a wall of the Scottish
parliament in Holyrood, it's no coincidence that Scot:Lands is taking
place on the first day of the year when Scotland decides its future
via the forthcoming independence referendum. Yet neither is
Scot:Lands an exercise in box-ticking acquiescence to its masters.
Rather, as is so often the case in Edinburgh's Hogmanay's performance
programme, it is a quietly subversive sleight-of-hand, in which
left-field or avant-garde art is put in the context of a high-profile
civic event, where it finds a huge mainstream audience beyond the
clubs, concert halls and studio theatres it is more often seen in.
This has perhaps more
often been the case when European street art specialists Plasticiens
Volants transformed the city itself into a spectacle, or when live
artists Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich performed a faux ritual in the
National Museum of Scotland. This was the case too when artist Spotov
created an audience-operated Battleships-like game involving
bizarrely costumed figures, and when Lothian-based electronic artist
Michael Begg and Nurse With Wound collaborator Colin Potter presented
Fragile Pitches, a three-hour sound installation drawn from
recordings of the local landscape, inside St Giles Cathedral.
While there might not
be anything on such a grand scale this year, the sheer diversity of
Scot:Lands suggests a parallel universe of multiple possibilities.
“Everyone's been
involved in creating their own world,” Irvine points out. “People
can spend half an hour in one world, then go on to somewhere
completely different, where they'll be introduced to something brand
new, and which is a total one-off. A lot of these shows could run for
three weeks in the Fringe, but these are totally unique, they're
free, and if you miss this one performance, it will never happen
again. The quality of the work will make people realise that there
are really special things going on in Scotland, and that they're a
rare privilege to witness.”
Scot:Lands begins at
the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh on January 1st
2014 from noon, with events at nine different locations in
Edinburgh's Old Town running until 4.30pm. All events are free.
www.edinburghshogmanay.com
ends
Scot:Lands – A World
In A Day
Home:Land – It all
starts here at the National Museum of Scotland, where audiences will
pick up a Landing Card before a postcard will provide details of
their first destination on a journey around Scot:Land's artistic
riches.
High:Land –
Ullapool's famed Ceilidh Place venue will host a rolling programme of
tradititional artists, including Dick Gaughan, Nancy Nicolson, Nigel
Clark, The Cast and the Joseph Peach Trio.
Wander:Land –
Dundee-based contemporary dance company Smallpetitklein take over one
of Edinburgh's landmark buildings, where they will perform work based
on Tolstoy and Ralph Waldo Emerson to a live Philip Glass soundtrack.
Heid:Land The Pathhead
Music Collective recreate a snapshot of musical life in a small ex
mining village in Fife, featuring the likes of Karine Polwart, Sophie
Bancroft, Corina Hewat, Amy Geddes, Tom Bancroft and others.
Lau:Land –
Edinburgh-sired nouveau folk trio Lau create their own world with a
little help from their musical friends, Fraser Fifield, Graeme
Stephen, Donald Hay and others.
Shet: Land – Shetland
Arts bring the spirit of Lerwick-based arts centre, Mareek, to town
with the likes of harpist Catriona Mackay, fiddler Chris Stout and a
host of others.
Shadow:Land –
Mercurial actor and director reimagines her hit stage collaboration
with a host of writers and musicians via a series of miniatures
exploring various responses to surviving the wee small hours. Actors
Frances Thorburn and John Kielty reunite with Bissett, musician
Wounded Knee and others for a bite-size version of the show.
Lobster:Land – Kenny
Anderson, aka Fence Collective pioneer King Creosote, aka King
Crabsote takes a fishy look at the Collective's East Neuk pond with
Withered Hand, aka Withered Claw and others from the, ahem, Fence
Krillective.
New:Found:Land –
Edinburgh-based art collective FOUND draft in some musical
associates, including Scottish Album of the Year winner RM Hubbert,
Emily Scott and others to perform a candle-lit meditation which
treats sound and silence as equals.
Nether: Land – The
Scottish Storytelling Festival allow Bob Pegg, The Prestonpans
Mummers and guests to introduce audiences to a world of ancient
rites via the Galoshins Folk Tales.
The Herald, December 27th 2013
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