Is North a geographic location or is it a direction? Is ‘Northern' an identity or an orientation?
Unless you are stood at the exact magnetic North, the point at which all these compasses face, there is always something more Northern. The politics of the North are inherent in us, and the actions we perform, whether that is in relation to an independent Scotland, a Europe-free Britain or a global climate emergency.
We ourselves are magnetic fields. Will our bodies make the needles orientate towards, or away from us, with each person acting as a different North? Your North might be an idea, or a place, a story, a picture, an accent, a memory or a song. Every human is their own compass, with their own North.
A Different North is a project about collecting and sharing Norths, it charts new Norths and forgotten Norths. Norths that are changing and ones that will soon be lost. A Different North is a choreographed durational performance that results in a temporary sculpture.
Over a period of hours, the performer creates 360 compasses through magnetising a pin and placing it on a cork disc within a shallow dish of water. The compasses are arranged on the floor to allow the audience to move between them.
The pins, whilst broadly aligning in the same direction will demonstrate subtle differences as they respond to the environment, the wires in the walls, nearby magnetic fields and even the presence of a spectator as they pass.
Gillian is a Glasgow based performance practitioner. She makes rigorous attempts to build and control her environment over hours, and sometimes days, by undertaking physically demanding and mentally exhausting durational performances. Gillian’s interest lies in the fleeting moment where her will to succeed meets her diminishing physical ability to complete each task.
Adam is a scientist, games designer, typesetter, comic artist, film-maker and Visual Artist. His practice reflects each of these disciplines, often combining them to create novel areas of exploration, using his background in creating scientific investigations as a starting point for artistic explorations and methodologies.
Together, they make a form of durational sculpture and their practice seeks to explore the notion of ‘the imagined ideal’ through subjective performance, objective experimentation, documentation and observation. Interdisciplinary in nature, their practice encompasses pedestrian choreography, sculpture and installation. They make work that engages through 'slow spectacle’, taking long durations (often 12 - 24 consecutive hours) and repetitive actions to build sculpture through performance. They demonstrate failure, endurance and precision.
