Four stars
The monumental gloom of
Nelson Monument on Calton Hill is saturated with ever morphing constellations
of light for Ten Thousand Miles of Edge, writer Robin Robertson’s exile’s travelogue
for this year’s Message from the Skies compendium of five city-wide
site-specific installations. Branded Shorelines, and with numerous public
partners supporting Edinburgh’s Hogmanay’s after-dark walkabout, the event is
designed to usher in 2020’s Year of Coasts and Waters. Lit up by the Bright
Side organisation’s dazzling projections, and pulsed by Alasdair Roberts’ tantric
neo-folk soundscape, Robertson’s piece maps out an incantatory meditation on
the coasts that shaped him.
The Union Canal in
Fountainbridge finds Kathleen Jamie’s Seascape with WEC a poetic love letter to
new wave energy converters she saw being tested on Orkney. Bright Side’s
projections of Thomas Moulson’s artwork bob into view like a 1970s public
information cartoon abstraction. On George Street, Lightkeepers by Charlotte
Runcie is brought to life by animator Kate Runcie and projected onto the
elegant façade of the Northern Lighthouse Board. Karine Polwart’s narration and
Pippa Murphy’s brooding piano underscore offer solace in the dark.
Sugar for Your Tea is Kayus
Bankole’s righteous reclaiming of hidden history, giving voice to those
forgotten, as others who made their fortunes from slavery are immortalised in
statues and street names. Bankole’s voice is calm but urgent, with Rianne White’s
video projected onto the City Chambers by the Double Take company. The former
seaman’s mission that is now the Malmaison hotel in Leith is the backdrop for The
Sea, Irvine Welsh’s candid memoir about the youthful influence of a sailor
ashore. Welsh’s words are set against Norman Harman’s vintage abstractions and projected
by Double Take, as Steve Mac’s chill-out room electronic pulse burbles into the
ether.
If you navigate the full
circuit in one go - and it takes a while - the journey itself becomes a
meditation on the ebb and flow of a metropolis in motion, lost, as Robertson
puts it, ‘to the robber barons and city planners. The thieves.’ He’s talking
about Aberdeen, but, oh, Edinburgh, so much to answer for.
The Herald, January 2nd 2020
ends
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