Half Life. NVA and National Theatre of Scotland, Kilmartin Glen, Argyll

Abstract

For two weeks in September 2007, the valley of Kilmartin became a pilgrimage site again. Half Life was an ambitious landscape event played out across the canvas of the familiar Kilmartin Glen, an event that intermingled ideas about the prehistoric past with our engagements with it in the contemporary world - a challenging combination. Half Life is the latest in a series of ambitious large-scale public artworks by the environmental arts organisation, NVA. This acronym stands for nacionale vitae activae (‘the right to influence public affairs’). Over the past 15 years, the group have been responsible for a number of high-profile landscape art events including ‘The Storr: Unfolding Landscape on Skye’, and ‘The Path’ in Glen Lyon. Half Life seems an even more ambitious project than usual, involving the collaboration of artists in a number of fields, from landscape art to experimental music, as well as the involvement of the National Theatre of Scotland. Half Life was described in pre-publicity as a ‘journey into the Neolithic’ to ‘reveal the dark but inspiring mindset of Scotland's Neolithic inhabitants’. In reality this equated to a range of events in the Kilmartin and Crinan area, including walks and site visits, landscape art installations and a dramatic production with actors and musicians each evening.