Dark Days

In 2014 – 2015, I was associate artist at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) in Glasgow, where I was invited to address some of my core research questions raised by my Early Warning Signs project: about the possibilities for ‘sustainable arts practice’ and the future of our arts institutions in light of the expected climate change over the next century. I developed and staged the Dark Days project on 13 February 2015 – offering one hundred participants the opportunity to stay the night in GoMA’s great hall as part of a pop-up community. As a practical experiment in communal living, Dark Days required participants to collectively discuss and address the short-term practical questions facing their new community, in order to explore the fundamental long-term question of politics: How Will We Live Together?Dark Days continues my research into creating and presenting alternative visions of the future (developed in The Other Forecast project in 2013). By using the willing participation of volunteers, I was able to create an image of how our grandiose municipal buildings may need to be re-imagined / re-used for alternative purposes over the next century (in a ‘post-art’ world). The participants’ experience and the ethics of the artwork itself were discussed and debated in two follow-up events at GoMA and at Tramway in Glasgow as part of Creative Carbon Scotland’s Glasgow’s Green: Imagining a Sustainable City event.Event Dates:13 - 14 February 2015, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (performance/event)4 March 2015, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (artist’s talk and documentary film screening) 14 March 2015, Tramway, Glasgow (presentation / discussion