For forty-two nights in 2005 something natural and yet artificially induced took place on the Isle of Skye, Scotland’s northern most coastal point. The ambitious spectacle, organized by the Scottish environmental arts organization, NVA, threw sound and light onto the tapestry of desolate landmass and its people in a way that changed the lives of the participants.

Conceived in 1992 NVA (Nacionale Vitae Activa) was the brain-child of Angus Farquhar, and was formed out of his desire to re-explore Scotland and its reverence for its own landscape and people. This project was, “rooted in geology, in history and national cultures, which are so sensitively handled, so open and generous, that one’s own memories, emotions and spiritually have room to connect… The work is always built on respect – respect for the landscape in which it is located, respect for the cultures it seeks to interpret and respect for those who witness it.” Turning attention away from the city and towards the Scottish landscape was encouraged by Farquhar’s former colleague at Situationist International (SI), Guy Debord, who challenged the enduring love of the spectacle in the city.

Writing in 2005, Louise Gray of Art Review described the context for such a work, citing Robert Smithson and James Turrell as land artists who sought to contextualize the landscape. There is the sense of movement that was generated over the course of the Storr project that reminded Gray of the walk undertaken in 1989 by artists Marina Abramovic and her performing partner Ulay. There is also an element of the work of Belgian artist Francis Alÿs in the mesmeric walks that the public endeavoured to make across the face of the Isle.

The Storr Project has since been immortalized by the shared human experience of the handful of people who were able to go from the mainland over to the Isle for one of the evenings on the project. On discussing Storr with Farquhar further, it becomes clear that this piece of history has been a real challenge, and a thoroughly inspiring one at that: “Personally I am always excited when I sense a resonance in a landscape, to climb up to the Storr in the winter snow in the moonlight, with only a hand-torch […] our work on Skye was a way of intensifying and manipulating ways of perceiving natural phenomena at night in a rudimentary but highly charged evocation.”

Storr is a testament to the ability of Farquhar and his colleagues to go out and achieve something almost impossible on a remote island that borders the dense nothingness of the seascape. The outstanding beauty of the Scottish landscape and its rich cultural heritage is here imbued with the light and sound that filled the landscape after dusk, and into dawn. Farquhar describes the relationship of such a project to the participants: “While the vision behind [the Storr project] might have been highly personal and part of my continual fascination with the land itself, how it effects issues of identity and spirit, the final work is a gift to those that came, in the hope that at best it becomes part of their internal dialogue with the outside world.”

Significantly, “the photographic documentation stands as a form of artwork in itself, with the special way that light bleeds its way into a camera at night.” Farquhar eloquently sums up the project as a “collision of landscape and imagination.”