storage for future sunsets is a multimedia durational performance specially created for gallery and indoor spaces. The work considers how we carry information within us and how dynamically this is engaged by others through our encounters. It is a work exploring how we learn and communicate through our language, movements, sound and touch; how we pass on information, how it’s received, learned, developed and evolved.

The work was originally commissioned by V&A Dundee as part of their Hello, Robot exhibition. The company and choreographer J Neve Harrington were invited to respond to the environment offered by Up-Sticks, a wooden structure designed and constructed using computational strategies and robotic technologies by Gramazio Kohler Research and students of the MAS Architecture and Digital Fabrication at ETH Zurich.

Up-Sticks was inspired by the historic Scottish method of building and dismantling lightweight crofts and was built through innovative and collaborative human-robotic fabrication techniques. In her work with the dancers, Harrington worked playfully with questions about how humans are programmed in the form of memory-making and how we store our experiences and expertise. Loss of information, forgetting, problems of access, corruption and interference, embellishment, influence, strange deviation, unexpected and the obvious featured in the process which involved text, dance and song.

In Spring 2021, J Neve Harrington was invited by Scottish Dance Theatre to further develop the work as a multimedia durational performance for galleries and other indoor spaces. This new iteration features film and set design elements to create a fully immersive and adaptable environment for visitors.

Creative team
Choreography and DirectionJ Neve Harrington
Text J Neve Harrington in collaboration with the company
Costume and Space Design J Neve Harrington
Costume Realisation Cate Mackie & Susan Doyle
Set and Space Realisation Lenny Whittet, Leila Kalbassi, Callum Sutherland
Filming Genevieve Reeves
Editing J Neve Harrington
Rehearsal Direction and Assistance Stephanie McMann, Naomi Murray, Katye Coe

Original Devising Cast Matilda Bjärum, Kieran Brown, Glenda Gheller, Luigi Nardone, Adrienne O’Leary, Genevieve Reeves, Oscar Pérez Romero, Jessie Roberts-Smith, Pauline Torzuoli, Johanna Wernmo.

Premiered in February 2020