About the Film

This artist duo documentary film follows The Order of Things, a piece made by Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry for Great North Run Culture, which I filmed in 2012. Each year the programme commissions an artist or filmmaker to respond to the Great North Run, and for its eighth edition it invited Kihlberg and Henry to turn their attention away from the runners entirely, towards the bridges, signposts and road markings that shape the route but usually disappear into the background.

Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry

Kihlberg and Henry work together as a moving-image duo, with a practice built around narrative, place and how people actually perceive the spaces around them. Their work has been shown internationally, including at Whitechapel Gallery in London and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, and their approach to filmmaking is careful and precise rather than showy.

The Order of Things

Rather than dramatic shots of the race itself, The Order of Things lingers on the urban fabric the runners pass through without noticing: bridges, signage, the ordinary texture of a city street. Karin put it simply while we were filming.

“I’m really interested in those places beyond the spectacular landmarks.”

The pace of the film reflects that. It moves slowly and rhythmically, closer to a Philip Glass composition than a sports film, built more around rhythm than harmony. That choice lets you hear the acoustics of a familiar urban space in a way that only exists for the length of the run itself, before it disappears again under normal traffic.

For one day a year, roads that are usually given over to cars and pavements are filled instead with thousands of people moving through them on foot. Kihlberg and Henry were interested in exactly that temporary shift: the same bridge or junction, suddenly reframed by scale and rhythm rather than function. Watching the film, you start noticing the same details in your own daily surroundings, which is probably the point.

Alongside the film, Kihlberg and Henry produced a book of the same name, gathering stills and research material from the project, extending the same attention to overlooked detail onto the page.

Filming an Artist Duo’s Vision

Matching the rhythm of the piece was the main technical challenge for me. Karin and Reuben’s approach leans on pattern and repetition rather than a conventional narrative arc, so the documentary needed to move at the same unhurried pace as the artwork itself rather than cutting quickly between talking points. It was a useful reminder of how differently a familiar piece of infrastructure can read once you slow down and actually look at it, rather than just moving through it on the way to somewhere else.

Films like this are part of why I enjoy working alongside artists specifically. Kihlberg and Henry had already worked out exactly what they wanted the piece to do before I arrived, and my job was to document that vision faithfully rather than shape it myself. Getting to sit inside someone else’s way of seeing a familiar place, even briefly, is one of the better parts of this work.

About Great North Run Culture

Great North Run Culture commissions a new artist or filmmaker response to the Great North Run each year, and has run for over a decade, giving the event a body of work that sits alongside the race itself rather than simply documenting it. The Order of Things was commissioned for the programme’s eighth edition, screened locally alongside the accompanying book. You can find out more about the wider Great North Run at greatrun.org.