Merchant City Festival: Towering ambition

A GIGANTIC tower made of cardboard, dancers flying through air and water on a street corner, and a car park filled with hibernating fictitious animals. Hardly your average weekend in Glasgow city centre, but these are just a few of the events at this year’s Merchant City Festival that are designed to make you stop and stare.

Innovative, large-scale shows, activities and exhibitions lie at the heart of this year’s festival. The kind of thing you see while you’re out shopping, and never forget. All of it is free, some you stand and watch, and some of it, like The People’s Tower, you can get actively involved in.

The brainchild of French artist Olivier Grossetête, the tower has been inspired architecturally by Glasgow’s Tolbooth Steeple. Anybody over the age of ten who is handy with a pair of scissors, cardboard and tape, can help create the “bricks” at workshops held at the Briggait throughout the week (e-mail [e-mail] to take part). The really special bit comes on the afternoon of Sunday 29 July, when Grossetête and members of the public assemble The People’s Tower on Brunswick Street – then knock it down again.

Neil Butler, artistic director of Glasgow-based UZ Arts, first came across Grossetête’s cardboard creations in Marseille, and invited him to work his magic in Scotland.

“It’s an amazing experience,” says Butler, “and the atmosphere is fantastic. Families have such fun building it, and we’re hoping that once it’s up, we can get the public to lift the tower and carry it around. Then, at the end, it’s got to come down, so you might as well have fun knocking it over.”

Initially, Butler invited Grossetête on a tour of Glasgow, showing him possible sites for inspiration. The Tolbooth Steeple, formerly the site of the city chambers in the 1600s, was the perfect choice. “It marks the historic centre of Glasgow,” says Butler. “It’s on the High Street, so if you go back in time to when Glasgow was first created as a medieval city, that was the centre.”

Grossetête has been creating work with cardboard for years, but if it goes ahead as planned, the tower in Glasgow will be his tallest structure to date.

“We’re hoping that this one will get to 50-60 feet high,” says Butler, “and dominate the Merchant City skyline. The main issue is the wind – that will determine how high we can go. But whatever height he achieves, it’s always remarkably impressive and a lot of fun.”

Butler has also been working with Glasgow-based performance company Mischief La Bas to bring their ambitious new project to the festival. Taking up residence in Ingram Street car park on 28 July and 29 July the impressively titled Professor Hildeberg’s Hibernating Antarctic Zoo has been almost three years in the making.

Stepping inside a 9m (30ft) refrigerated container, a small audience of 20 is given protective clothing to wear, before being introduced to hibernating creatures from the Antarctic. The “creatures” are completely fictitious, born from the imagination of Mischief La Bas’ artistic director, Ian Smith. “It’s a fantastic project,” says Butler. “We’ve brought together artists from across Europe to work with Ian, and all the creatures have been made by a world-class taxidermist company in Belgium. Some of the creatures are really funny, and very lifelike.”

Blending video, performance and art installations, the Zoo has been a hit with all ages. “I have seen it with very small children, pensioners and cool clubbers inside it,” says Butler, “and all of them were knocked out by it. It really is for everybody.”

Professor Hildeberg’s creatures won’t be awaking from their sleep any time soon, but at 5pm on 27 July, another mythical creature will be stirring from his slumbers. Created by Vision Mechanics, Big Man Walking is a 8m (26ft) puppet who will “wake up” in George Square surrounded by Gaelic singers. From there, he’ll be journeying through the Merchant City, picking up a Brazilian band on the way, and will return to the Merchant City on Saturday afternoon for another walkabout.

With much of the programme at this year’s festival, it’s the scale that impresses. Fish out of Water, a large-scale community project by Conflux, will see 50 performers entertain the crowds on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, including a gigantic shoal of “fish” roaming the streets.

Water also plays a part in Caroline Bowditch’s new dance work, Leaving Limbo Landing, which will dominate the corner of Hutcheson Street and Wilson Street. Performed at 1.30pm, 3.45pm and 6pm on Saturday and 1.30pm and 4pm on Sunday, the half hour show is a mix of aerial work and dance, using a large scaffolding structure and a wall of water.

Bowditch moved to the UK from Australia ten years ago, and it was the memory of that experience that inspired Leaving Limbo Landing. “I couldn’t go forward and I couldn’t go back,” recalls Bowditch. “And the idea of being suspended suggested to me that the piece had to happen in the air and in water.”

The idea of moving from one place to another is layered throughout the piece. An original score has been written, featuring the six performers talking about their own experience of moving to Britain. While the costumes have been made with paraphernalia such as bubble wrap and luggage tags.

Despite the very personal nature of the piece, the audience reaction in London proved that Bowditch was not alone in her emotional response to relocating: “People who had their own stories about moving from one country to another could see bits of their stories in the work. But even if they didn’t, they found it enchanting and beautiful, and quite magical. The water is unexpected when it comes, and the dancers are extraordinary. They perform the piece with such grace.”

• The Merchant City Festival runs 25-29 July in Glasgow. www.merchantcityfestival.com.