Skip to main content

Message from the Skies 2020

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


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Billy Elliot The Musical

Edinburgh Playhouse Five stars A big National Coal Board sign looms large at the opening of Lee Hall and Elton John's decade-old musical stage version of Hall and director Stephen Daldry's hit turn of the century film. In a tale of one little boy's liberation as a dancer against the backdrop of the 1980s miners strike, however, the Durham Miners banner and the 'Save Our Community' sash held aloft matter more. It is this call to arms that forms the heart of Daldry's production, as Billy becomes a potty-mouthed beacon of hope in a situation where picket line, thin blue line and chorus line rub uneasily up against each other. Given such a context, there is bound to be some pretty grown-up stuff going on here, be it the institutionalised homophobia in Billy's village, the class war going on within it, or Billy's grieving for his dead mother that drives his every move. And, as so magnificently choreographed by Peter Darling, what moves they are. Watch...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
1 comment
Read more

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more