When Are We?
In July 2025, Lancaster Arts hosted the second of three TEST residencies on LAND, our annual theme for this year. This residency series is for artists and academics to explore the intersections of art and land, from a range of different perspectives. The residency team consisted of Lancaster Arts Curator Miranda Stearn and producer Alice Booth, interdisciplinary artist Ellie Harrison, her support worker and collaborator Matt Rogers and four academics at Lancaster University exploring Land in their work; a research group from Lancaster University Management School including Neil Ralph, Anthony Hesketh and Zi Quan, and Professor of History and Social Futures, Carlos Lopez-Galviz.
Ellie Harrison wrote the following reflections, exploring her experience of the residency week.
“The past is another country,
they do things differently there.”
L.P. Hartley, The Go Between
In my study there is a bag that I’ve used as a doorstop for 20 years.
Last year, I opened it. Inside, reels of film.
Footage shot by my grandfather between the 1920’s and 1940’s.
Footage of landscapes shot from his plane, dock workers in Holland staring at him from under peaked bonnets, mountaineers halfway up the Eiger and my great grandma in an immaculate fur coat. Italy. France. Dorset. I started to build a map. It led me to roots in Hull and Manchester.
My grandfather designed sound equipment for the first talking pictures that were installed in 10 Theatres across the north. Morecombe Winter Gardens, Bury Hippodrome, The Palace Preston.
And so, the first day of my residency sees us (me and my collaborator and support worker Matt) arrive in Morecombe on a glorious day with the sun hitting the sea. We exchange sunlight for flashing coloured lights as we enter the winter gardens, retracing my grandfather’s footsteps. He might have innovated in technology, but he was not a kind man. I feel a little like his ghost might appear at any moment. After our tour I want to swim but we need to get back. The landscape will have to wait.
We meet the academics in a pre-Raphaelite setting of the apple store (an old farm, not the brightly lit church to retail). We talk about how different moments in time can overlap (polytemporality), and how places can hold layers of events (palimpsest)—like a surface that shows traces of what came before as well as what’s happening now.
“Something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.”
They tell me about how they marry the works of Wordsworth with the local landscape to help business leaders think in new ways. They are both deeply invested in the local landscape, and I realise how much I miss my engagement with rural spaces. As a disabled person, my landscape has shrunk, often to the four walls of my home, reducing my access to hills, forests, water. I think about the footage and its ability to transport audiences to different places and times. There is a lake near the apple store that is just asking to be swum in. I want to immerse myself in the water, but my energy is flagging, and we need to get back. The landscape will have to wait.
We loved having access to a generous theatre, to create some indoor landscapes. There is a lot of footage, and we begin to group it. Land, Sea, Air and find music that feels right. Conjuring the feeling of wind in your hair or sand between your toes.
I write letters to my ancestors and the theatre becomes its own landscape. I didn't know you can get travel sick when going back and forth between the past and present but you can. I lie on the floor of the theatre as still as a mountain, adding a landmark to this poly-temporal environment. Fortunately the audience at the end of the week seem to warm to the mountain me. I’m excited to explore this new performance presence. Not the pre chronic illness, performer me, running around with a sharpened kitchen knife, but the scenic me; resting, sitting, watching. This process will continue long after we have left Lancaster.
Our first residency on LAND took place in January 2025 with artist Kate Fox. You can read her blog here. Our third residency on the theme has been awarded to multi-disciplinary artist Lucy Wright, and will take place in September 2025.
Ellie Harrison is a disabled performance maker and artist based in Leeds and working in the UK and internationally. She creates a range of solo and collaborative devised performance work for studios, galleries, found and public spaces. Participation is at the heart of all her work as a performer, facilitator and mentor. Her work is often characterised by a playful and provocative approach to difficult topics, encouraging audiences to make decisions and participate. Ellie is supported in her role by a team of Access Assistants.
