Giant dragon to launch Edinburgh Art Festival
A giant dragon representing “corporate greed” is to be paraded down the Royal Mile today as a curtain-raiser to the city’s 70th season of festivals.
Two leading artists are to stage a performance with the inflatable creature in the heart of the High Street, which will be thronged from street performers from next week,
Around 40 primary schoolchildren will join the parade between the thoroughfare and the remains of a 15th century church building, where the dragon will be on display throughout August.
Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich’s project has been inspired by the 100th anniversary of a manifesto by town planner Sir Patrick Geddes, who led efforts to revive the Old Town as a place to live.
Walker and Bromwich , who are renowned for their largescale sculptural works, say they want to raise questions on how to “slay the dragon of profit, private ownership and corporate greed.” Actor Tam Dean Burn will be joining the two artists on the High Street from 2pm today to perform a show inspired by pageants staged by Geddes himself.
The dragon will then be on display inside Trinity Apse, part of a gothic kirk which was relocated to Chalmers Close, off the High Street, to make way for expansion of Waverley Station in the 19th century.
It is one of several corners of the Old Town being opened up to the public for the Edinburgh Art Festival. Others include an urban wildlife reserve on Johnston Terrace, the former
0 Zoe Walker with the dragon that will represent corporate greed home of Geddes in Ramsay Garden, and Gladstone Court, the site of an asylum for “young girls or fallen women who have deviated from the path of virtue and peace.”
Bromwich said: “The dragon motif is inspired by an image from a banner carried by Northumberland mine workers in the 1920s, which was basically a call for mines to be nationalised, and Geddes’s quote about ‘by leaves we live.’
“They will be fused together in the procession of greenleaves and eco-inspired pageantry, inspired by Geddes’s own eco-anarchism and love of pageants. We’ll perform right outside the Fringe office.
“A lot of visionary ideas have been assimilated by corporate money. There are monolothic corporations that kind of control everything. I think there is a real reawakening at the moment, with people asking how we can live in better ways as a society.”
Walker added: “There are very important debates happening about the distribution of wealth in Britain. Edinburgh is becoming a really expensive place to live, particularly in the city centre, so it’s very relevant here.
“We’re also really interested in the original vision for the Edinburgh International Festival that it could rebuild the human spirit after the war.”