Actional Poetics – ASH SHE HE: The Performance Actuations of Alastair MacLennan, 1971–2020

A retrospective monograph of Alistair MacLennan’s performance art practice, its influence on the Belfast art scene, and its relationships with wider art histories. This new book is the most comprehensive and complete legacy monograph about Alastair MacLennan’s extensive performance practice

Alastair MacLennan is emeritus professor of fine art, School of Art and Design, Ulster University in Belfast. He is one of Britain’s major practitioners in live art, and travels extensively in Eastern and Western Europe, also America and Canada, presenting ‘Actuations’ (his term for performance/installations).  MacLennan is a founding member of Belfast's Art and Research Exchange, of Belfast's Bbeyond performance collective and is a member of the performance art entity Black Market International. He has represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale (1997) and is an honorary associate of the National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, Scotland.

There is a wide variety of approach in the essays, ranging from descriptive to interpretive. Some set the work in historical context and others provide pertinent biography. This variety is appropriate – and perhaps even necessary – in looking at the work of a living artist whose work is particularly complex. The selection of essays presents a complex body of work in an understandable way, with each writer allowed to address the art in their own terms. Placing the work in historical context is important but presenting MacLennan as an influential teacher is also important.

Includes a significant contribution from Adrian Heathfield (professor of performance and visual culture at Roehampton, UK) who has written an extended essay on MacLennan’s oeuvre, focusing on its use of materials and its creation of sculptural environments. Discussing the artist’s deployment of slow-time action and contemplative space, Heathfield sees MacLennan’s work as activating sustained contact with the elemental and locates MacLennan’s work as a significant intervention in performance art history globally and discusses the politics of its engagement with local history, violence, social conflict and memory.

The primary readership will be academics, researchers and scholars working in performance art and contemporary art in general. Also valuable to students in performance art, visual arts and related practices.

Of relevance to academics and artists in the interrelated fields of performance art, art and philosophy, critical theory, conflict studies and Zen philosophy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781789383744

Book preview

Actional Poetics –

ASH SHE HE

First published in the UK in 2021 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK

First published in the USA in 2021 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Copyright © 2021 Intellect Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Right Here Right Now, 2012, Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, Ireland. Photograph: © Joseph Carr Photography.

Copy editor: NewGen Knowledgeworks

Cover designer: Aleksandra Szumlas

Production manager: Jelena Stanovnik

Typesetter: Aleksandra Szumlas

Print ISBN 9781789383720

ePDF ISBN 9781789383737

ePub ISBN 9781789383744

Printed and bound by Gomer, UK.

Published in collaboration with Bbeyond.

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Contents

List of Illustrations and Photographic Credits

Foreword

Sandra Johnston, Chérie Driver and Brian Patterson

Foreword

Robert McDowell

Acknowledgements

Ash She He: The Substance of Memory

Paula Blair, Matthew Hearn and Sandra Johnston

Tender Dwelling in the Strewn Adrian Heathfield

‘Maybe you don’t need the paintbrush…’:

In Conversation

Declan McGonagle and Alastair MacLennan

Troubled Time

Nick Stewart

Alastair MacLennan: A Life Seen as a Form of Pedagogy

Brian Connolly

‘Sometimes you need help from other people’s ghosts’: Alastair MacLennan’s Multidisciplinary and ‘Instituting’ Practice as Civil Action

Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes

Elemental Qualities in the Work of Alastair MacLennan

Denys Blacker

Alastair MacLennan: Universal Nomad Nigel Rolfe

Actuations: Alastair MacLennan’s Influence on Bbeyond

Brian Patterson

Triple-AAA: Alastair MacLennan, Adrian Hall and André Stitt: Spectral Arc, Vanishing Point and Memoranda – Hauntology and Atemporality in Performances, 2011–13

André Stitt

Moments of Being: Echoes, Reverberations and Experiential Knowing

Chérie Driver

Death, Transience and Duration Helge Meyer

Proximity and Perpetrators: Registering Perpetrators in the Performance Art of Alastair MacLennan

Dominic Thorpe

Precarious Aftermaths Paula Blair

Straying: Engendering a Feral Imagination Sandra Johnston

References

Select Biography of Works

Notes on Contributors

List of Illustrations and Photographic Credits

All works titles are in italics and classified as Actuation (Performance/Installation) unless otherwise stated. All photos are Courtesy of the Alastair MacLennan Archive, DJCAD, University of Dundee, unless otherwise stated.

Page ii: Untitled Ongoing Studio Drawing, thinned black oil paint, turps and water. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page iv: Untitled Ongoing Studio Drawing, thinned black oil paint, turps and water. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page vi: Untitled Ongoing Studio Drawing, thinned black oil paint, turps, water and charcoal. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page xvii: Untitled Ongoing Studio Drawing, thinned black oil paint, turps, water and charcoal. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page xiv: Untitled Ongoing Studio Drawing, thinned black oil paint, turps, water and charcoal. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page xvi: Untitled Ongoing Studio Drawing, black Indian ink, water and charcoal. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Pages xviii-xix: Untitled Ongoing Studio exploration of materials, latex gloves, ribbons, safety pins. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page 1: Right Here Right Now, 2012, Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, Ireland. Photograph: © Joseph Carr Photography.

Page 2: Twenty Four Hours, 1981, Project Arts Centre Dublin, Ireland. Photographer unknown.

Page 3: Pam Amp, 2011, New Territories,Tipa: this is performance art, Triple Kirks, Peacock Visual Arts Gallery, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. Photograph: © Jürgen Fritz, www.i-pa.org.

Page 4: Coal a Goal, 2015, Arctic Action: International Action Art Festival, Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway. Photograph: Stein Henningsen.

Page 5: Black Market International, 2 Performances, 2005, Bone Festival 8, Schlachthaus Theatre, Bern, Switzerland. Photograph: Martin Rindlisbacher, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Black Kit Archive, ASA European, Cologne, Germany.

Page 6: Black Market International, 2 Performances, 2010, Bone 13, Schlachthaus Theatre, Bern, Switzerland. Photograph: Daniela Beltrani, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Black Kit Archive, ASA European, Cologne, Germany.

Page 7 and 8: Days and Nights, 1981, Acme Gallery, London, England. Photographer unknown.

Page 9 and 10: Unseeing Trace, 1999, Trace, Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary International Art, Liverpool, England. Photographer unknown.

Page 11 and 12: Pael, 1997, First International Performance Festival Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik Odense, Denmark. Photographer unknown.

Page 13 and 14: Coil to Met, 2009, Locus+ Orchard Street, Newcastle England. Photograph: © Locus+ Archive. Photographer: Colin Davison.

Page 15 and 16: And to Sand, 2015, Contexts 5th International Sokołowsko Festival of Ephemeral Art, Sokołowsko, Poland. Photographer unknown.

Page 17 and 18: Berth An Earth, 2015, Hosptialfield, Arbroath, Scotland. Photographer unknown.

Page 19, 20, 21 and 22: Target, 1977, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Photographer unknown.

Page 23, 24 and 25: Hanging, 1981, Cresent Arts Centre, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Photographer unknown.

Page 26: Hand to And, 2015, Performance Art + Northern Ireland, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page 41 and 42: Mael,1996, New Moves, Nationals Review of Live Art, Glasgow, Scotland. Photographer unknown.

Page 43: Twenty Four Hours, 1981, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, Ireland. Photographer unknown.

Page 46: Lain Nail, 2012, Marco Museum of Contemporary Art, Vigo, Spain. Photograph: MARCO/Janite.

Page 49 and 50: Coil to Met, 2009, Locus+ Orchard Street, Newcastle England. Photograph: © Locus+ Archive. Photographer: Colin Davison.

Page 74 and 76: Bust as Dust, 2019, Somatic Distortion: Performance Art Event, Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Manorhamilton, Ireland. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page 77 and 78: Seam Same, 1994, Irish Days 2, Ustka, Poland. Photograph: Sandra Johnston.

Page 79 and 80: Body of (B)Light, 2007, Chapter Art Centre, Cardiff, Wales. Photographer unknown.

Page 81 and 82: Words Sword, 1998, Irish Days 5, Baltic Art Centre, Ustka, Poland. Photograph: Waldemar Michorzewski.

Page 83 and 84: Alientegration, 1983, Franklin Furnace Gallery, New York, U.S.A. Photographer unknown.

Page 85 and 86: Killskill, 2009, Naughton Gallery, Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Photograph: Brian Patterson.

Page 87 and 88: Opean, 2019, Einstein Str., 4Z, Munich, Germany. Photographer unknown.

Page 89 and 90: Hand to And, 2015, Performance Art + Northern Ireland, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page 91, 92, 93 and 94: Lay Allude, 2016, collaboration with Sandra Johnston, Bolit Contemporary Arts Centre, Girona, Spain. Photograph: Denys Blacker.

Page 95: Black Market International, 1992, 4 Performances, Wesserstrasse, Alte Reithalle, Kassel, Germany. Photographic image copyright of artists and courtesy of Black Kit Archive, ASA European, Cologne, Germany.

Page 96: Black Market International, 1997, 2 Performances, Stadtgalerie, Bern, and Liquid Visions' International Symposium of Science, Lucern, Switzerland. Photograph: Martin Rindlisbacher, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Black Kit Archive, ASA European, Cologne, Germany.

Page 97: No In, 1997, Inner Art, Fire Station Artists Studios, Sean McDermott Street, Dublin, Ireland. Photographer unknown.

Page 104: Target, 1977, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Photographer unknown.

Page 125, 126, 127 and 128: Bag to Prague, 1989, Performance Festival, Prague, Czechoslovakia. Photographer unknown.

Page 129 and 130: Holding Time III, 2014, Bbeyond, Stormont, Parliament Buildings, Belfast, NI. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Bbeyond.

Page 131, 132, 133 and 134: Gale A Gael, 2016, Future Histories, Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, Ireland. Photograph: © Joseph Carr Photography.

Page 135, 136, 137 and 138: Alastair MacLennan: Actuations and Other Works, 2019, Dundee archive exhibition, University of Dundee. Photograph: Malcolm Finnie.

Page 139: Same Difference: Equinox to Equinox, Sept, 2016, Bbeyond, Lagan weir, Belfast, NI. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Bbeyond.

Page 140: Bbeyond Performance Monthly meeting, 2015, Helen’s Bay, Co. Down, NI. Photograph:Jordan Hutchings, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Bbeyond.

Page 141: Student Workshop, 1975, Queens University and streets from Art College, Belfast, NI. Photograph: Adrian Hall.

Page 142: Operation Ambassadors, 2006, Richard Martel Workshop Presentation, Bbeyond, from Black Box to City Hall returning via Royal Ave, Belfast, NI. Photograph: Siobhan Mullen, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Bbeyond.

Page 143: Operation Ambassadors, 2007, Boris Nieslony Workshop Presentation, Bbeyond, Custom House Square, Belfast, NI. Photograph: Siobhan Mullen, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Bbeyond.

Page 144: On the Way … Bbeyond project, Group performance, 2020, Marcus Square, Newry, Co. Down, Northern Ireland. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Bbeyond.

Page 145: Performance Monthly meeting, 2016, St. Columbs Park, Derry. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Bbeyond.

Page 148: Belfast Telegraph, 10 May 1978.

Page 155: Triple-AAA, 2013, Alastair MacLennan, Adrian Hall and André Stitt, Catalyst Arts, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page 163 and 173: Raits Stair, 2008, Out of Site, Clontarf, Dublin, Ireland. Photographer unknown.

Page 174, 175 and 176: Triple-AAA, 2013, Alastair MacLennan, Adrian Hall and André Stitt, Catalyst Arts, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page 177 and 178: Save Vase, 2016, 6th International Festival of Ephemeral Art: Contexts 2016, Villa Rosa, Sokołowsko, Poland. Photographer unknown.

Page 179: Black Market International, 2009, 10th Open International Performance Art Festival, 798 Art Zone, Beijing, China. Photograph image copyright of artists and courtesy of Black Kit Archive, ASA European, Cologne, Germany.

Page 180: Black Market International, 2010, 2 Performances, Bone 13, Schlachthaus Theatre, Bern, Switzerland. Photograph: Daniela Beltrani, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Black Kit Archive, ASA European, Cologne, Germany. Page 181 and 182: Wave to Waive, 2007, CAT, Cardiff Art in Time, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, UK. Photograph: © trace: archive, Cardiff, Cymru.

Page 183 and 184: Knot Naught, 2003, Alastair MacLennan Retrospective, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, NI. Photograph: Ian Charlesworth.

Page 185 and 186: Wontown, 2011, Beyond Necessity, Performance Space, 6 Hamlet Industrial Estate, White Post Lane. London, England. Photograph: Marco Berardi.

Page 187 and 188: Bled Edge, 1988, Prison Cells Underneath Kingsway Princeton College, 8 North-burgh Street, Clerkenwell, London, England. Photograph: © Locus+ Archive.

Page 189, 190, 191 and 192: Lie to Lay, 1986, Projects UK, Warehouse Roseberry Terrace, Sandy-ford, Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. Photograph: © Locus+ Archive. Photographer: Steve Collins.

Page 193: Side Cide, 2015, BALTIC 39, Newcastle, England. Photograph: Denys Blacker.

Page 195: Wontown, 2011, Beyond Necessity, Performance Space, 6 Hamlet Industrial Estate, White Post Lane. London, England. Photograph: Marco Berardi.

Page 204: Alchemist, 2010, Installation, with Richard Ashrowan and Sandra Johnston, International Festival of Visual Art, Glasgow, Scotland. Photograph: Richard Ashrowan.

Page 210: Performance, 1971, Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada. Photographer Unknown.

Page 217, 218, 219 and 220: Feat a Heat, 2015, Arctic Action: International Action Art Festival, Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway. Photograph: Stein Henningsen.

Page 221: Blackout, Air A Lair, Retrospective, 2017, Installations shots, Meadows Galleries and Corner Gallery Summerhall, Edinburgh, Scotland. Photograph: Cat Thomson.

Page 222, 223 and 224: Air A Lair Retrospective, 2017, Installations shots, Meadows Galleries and Corner Gallery Summerhall, Edinburgh, Scotland. Photograph: Cat Thomson.

Page 225: Cane Bane, 2014, International Performance Art Tour (Live Art Now Tour), Tai Hang Da Xin Gu, AA Yang Linzhou, China. Photograph: image copyright of artists and courtesy of Black Kit Archive, ASA European, Cologne, Germany.

Page 226: Let Liminal Loose, 2014, collaborative performances with Sandra Johnston, 2nd Venice International Performance Art Week, Venice, Italy. Photograph: Boris Nieslony, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Black Kit Archive, ASA European, Cologne, Germany.

Page 227 and 228: Rust A Gust, 2019,14th Biennial of Curitiba. p.ARTE, MAC-PR & Bienal De Curitibia, Curitiba, Southern Brazil. Photograph: Rodrigo Della Favera and Ana Teresa Quesado.

Page 229 and 230: Link in Ink (2), 2012, Up-on International Performance Art Festival, Cheng Du Academy of Fine Arts, Cheng Du, China. Photograph: Zhou Bin, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Black Kit Archive, ASA European, Cologne, Germany.

Page 231 and 232: Link in Ink (3), 2012, Up-on International Performance Art Festival, Xian, China. Photograph: Xiang Xishi, image copyright of artists and courtesy of Black Kit Archive, ASA European, Cologne, Germany.

Page 233, 234, 235 and 236: Warp Wrap, 2009, Marina Abramovic Presents, Manchester International Festival, Whitworth Art Gallery / Manchester University, Manchester, England. Photograph: Marco Anelli.

Page 237, 238 and 239: Wave by Waive, 2013, Contexts 3rd International Sokołowsko Festival of Ephemeral Art, Sokołowsko. Photograph: Julia Merska.

Page 240: Cant Can’t (Slide Side), 1993, Postcard, Cresent Arts Centre, Belfast, NI.

Page 241: Untitled Ongoing Studio Drawing, thinned black oil paint, turps and water. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page 253: Untitled Ongoing Studio Drawing, black Indian ink and water. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page 271: Untitled Ongoing Studio Drawing, thinned black oil paint, turps and water. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Page 277: Untitled Ongoing Studio Drawing, black Indian ink and water. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Foreword

Sandra Johnston, Chérie Driver and Brian Patterson

Since his arrival in Belfast in 1975 Alastair MacLennan has been a distinctive, even notorious presence in the local art scene. Armed with nothing more than the humblest of tools and resources, he has nonetheless disarmed, and effectively revolutionized, understandings of how creativity can be activated in contested spaces as an antidote to conflict.

This book aims to make the scope and impact of MacLennan’s complex work accessible to readers, offering a range of perspectives that contextualize the material nature of the artworks and delineate a number of prospective motivations. MacLennan’s practice has seen limited circulation in museum and art historical contexts. This absence can be ascribed in part to the ‘marginal’ attitude he has engendered: a contestation of art production as an unacceptable form of consumerism. Since its publication in 1988, MacLennan’s Arnolfini catalogue, Is No, has remained the most comprehensive record of his early performances and Slavka Sverakova’s text a benchmark for researchers investigating MacLennan’s practice. Fifteen years later Ormeau Baths produced the retrospective exhibition and catalogue Knot Naught: Alastair MacLennan (2003BIB-127). More recently, the exhibitions Lie to Lay: Alastair MacLennan (2017) and Alastair MacLennan, Actuations & Other Works (2019) brought together a discrete selection of drawings, objects, archival materials and video documentation of performance work spanning MacLennan’s career. Despite this recent resurgence of representation, there is a clear dearth (a very MacLennan word) of visibility and critical consideration for such an important artist, and this book attempts to redress some of this deficit.

With the intention of producing a refreshed critical appraisal of MacLennan’s legacy, we are extremely grateful for the backing of the various funding sources that recognized the importance of this task. Bbeyond would like to extend their sincere thanks to Arts Council Northern Ireland, Henry Moore Foundation, Northumbria University and Ulster University all of whom have made this publication possible. On 19 June 2019, the acquisition of MacLennan’s archive by Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design was formally made public. Returned ‘home’ to his alma mater, through the efforts of Arthur Watson, Euan McArthur and Adam Lockhart, it will continue to be digitized and made accessible as an invaluable performance art research source.

MacLennan is a compelling presence who has fundamentally changed the attitudes and conventions of those who work with him and beside him. It is essential to acknowledge the deep humour and benevolence that he brings into a room and to signal how his integrity and wisdom are always conveyed in ways that deflate awkwardness and enable others to engage wholeheartedly without fear of judgement. This is the exemplary aspect of his presence as teacher, mentor, confidant and friend. In coming together to produce this volume, Bbeyond intend for it to extend the understanding of MacLennan’s profound approach to creativity. In addition, we offer it as a token of our sincere gratitude for all the warmth and humanity MacLennan has brought into our community and for the myriad ways he has inspired us individually towards greater attentiveness and care.

Sandra Johnston, Chérie Driver and Brian Patterson

Foreword

Robert McDowell

What’s to say when in every performance he tells us so much but speaks so little? Like a Shaman from the Pleistocene when mammals first ruled, we got the first hominids after the rise of megafauna by the end of which long time world sea-levels were rising like again now!

Performance art, happenings, actions, events, actuations, actional poetics. Where other artists might have performed 25 or so of the above in a whole career, Alastair MacLennan has made hundreds – hundreds, and they were all across the globe. He is by far the world’s most performed performance artist – no one else comes even remotely close. I tried counting, but …

Where 2D or 3D works by other artists who also make performances would normally, however abnormal in other ways, be secondary or peripheral to the artist’s principal oeuvre or career, with MacLennan it is wholly, entirely the other way around. Much like Beuys, his ‘art’ is part of – or taken from – performance, and therefore simply by looking at the documents and artefacts, you will not get far. Also, every performance is derived often surprisingly, rarely obviously, from earlier ones going back however many years and pointing ahead to future actuations.

Taken together collectively the performances, all of them – plus those yet to happen – are all one work. As Richard Demarco relishes saying with an Italo-Scots flourish, getting his tongue to grip the German words ‘ein Gesamtkunstwerk’, yes, really; a great singular total work so formidable in MacLennan’s case, how can it ever be adequately described, if at all, and why? How can all those performances lasting minutes, hours or even days – in almost as many different corners of the world, no performance ever copied, yet each connected to every other one – how can so many together be one work? It is like claiming a museum’s collection is just a singularity!

Performance art does not have an audience, only witnesses, attendees and viewers, who can be there entirely by accident or because the performance is not in an arts space but in a thoroughfare or public square, or anywhere, often in places that give no clue as to what is going on. Viewers, whether or not they are also participants, are free to leave and re-enter however they feel; indeed, so too are the performance artists. Questions are encouraged! Quite probably the performance may be hitting somehow at some issue, political, psychological, social or philosophical, and you may see clues in objects or actions deployed, or all, or none of these. Whichever, it will mainly be beyond words to know and feel sure about what is to be understood. This is not least because the artist is also exploring, testing, finding and juggling with materials, effects, symbols: with all that is stressful about improvising, so that it too becomes about stuff-beyond even being there, or as some have learned to say, ‘b-beyond!’

Robert McDowell first met Alastair MacLennan at the Belfast School of Art and subsequently invited him to Documenta 6 (1977) to participate in Joseph Beuys’s FIU and 100 Days of the Honey Pump. McDowell is the director of Summerhall, Edinburgh, and has commissioned and exhibited MacLennan’s practice on a number of occasions, most recently through the retrospective exhibition AIR A LAIR (2017BIB-002).

Robert McDowell

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the current and previous Bbeyond committees and general membership for their sterling work in developing and supporting local, national and international performance art practice here in Belfast and abroad. I am also very grateful to the Bbeyond committee for overseeing and managing the evolution of this volume. I am very appreciative of the devoted time, effort and focused attention given by the book’s authors and interviewers in assembling this work.

Also to be thanked are the efforts of artists and archivists Arthur Watson, Euan McArthur, Adam Lockhart and Calum Colvin at Duncan of Jordan-stone College of Art and Design (University of Dundee); Lois Keidan and the team at LADA; Jon Bewley and Jonty Tarbuck at Locus+, who were the custodians of my archive from 2008 to 2019; and a great many others who have granted support in piecing together some understanding of individual events, and the international networks that have shaped my Life’s works.

Special thanks are due to Matthew Hearn and Paula Blair for their insightful and skillful copy-editing, which greatly enriched the realization of this book. Thanks also to Jordan Hutchings for his tireless efforts in photographing and collating images, for both Bbeyond and myself, and thanks also to CJ Mitchell from LADA, Adrian Heathfield and Hugo Glendinning for their generosity in sharing their knowledge and expertise.

We give clear recognition and thanks to our funders: the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Henry Moore Foundation, Northumbria University and Ulster University.

I would like to give appreciative thanks to my parents, Annie MacKay and Chris MacLennan, for allowing me to study fine art in art school, aged 17; my sisters, Irene and Isobel (Isy), for their continued love and support; and Ray Yoshida, Whitney Halstead, Ted Halkin, Vera Berdich, Toby Chapman, Rinzai and Soto Zen teachers Joshu Sasaki and Paul Haller, John Cage, Slavka Sverakova, Adrian Hall, David Ledsham, Tony Hill, members of Belfast’s Art and Research Exchange and Nikki Milican for including me in the United Kingdom’s National Review of Live Art, Boris Nieslony and Black Market International friends, Małgorzata Sady of Contexts, Sokołowsko, Artur Tajber, Łukasz Guzek, Martha Wilson, Marina Abramović, Denys Blacker, Shannon Cochrane, Sandra Corrigan Breathnach, Richard Martel, Władysław Kaźmierczak, Seiji Shimoda, James King, Richard Demarco, Hilary Robinson, Hugh Mulholland, Peter Richards, Jamshid Fenderesky, Áine Phillips, Bronagh Lawson, Suellen Semekoski, Marilyn Arsem, Richard Ashrowan, Joe McIntyre, Martin Wedge, Brian Kennedy, Declan Kennedy of KCAT, former BA/MA/MFA/Ph.D. students and so many more.

Finally, I give special acknowledgement and sincere thanks to Sandra Johnston, Cherie Driver and Brian Patterson for their stalwart work and unremitting processing of this initially unanticipated publication on my behalf. I am greatly humbled by and indebted to their generosity of spirit.

Alastair MacLennan, July 2020

Right Here Right Now, 2012, Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, Ireland. Photograph: © Joseph Carr Photography.

Twenty Four Hours, 1981, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, Ireland.

Pam Amp, 2011, New Territories: Tipa, Triple Kirks, Peacock Visual Arts Gallery, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. Photograph: © Jürgen Fritz, www.i-pa.org.

Coal a Goal, 2015, Arctic Action: International Action Art Festival, Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway. Photograph: Stein Henningsen.

Black Market International, 2 Performances, 2005, Bone Festival 8, Schlachthaus Theatre, Bern, Switzerland. Photograph: Martin Rindlisbacher, Image copyright of artists and courtesy of Black Kit Archive, ASA European, Cologne, Germany.

Black Market International, 2 Performances, 2010, Bone 13, Schlachthaus Theatre, Bern, Switzerland. Photograph: Daniela Beltrani, Image copyright of artists and courtesy of Black Kit Archive, ASA European, Cologne, Germany.

Days and Nights, 1981, Acme Gallery, London, England (pages 7 and 8).

Unseeing Trace, 1999, Trace, Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary International Art, Liverpool, England (pages 9 and 10).

Pael, 1997, First International Performance Festival Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik Odense, Denmark.

Coil to Met, 2009, Locus+ Orchard Street, Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. Photo credit: © Locus+ Archive. Photographer: Colin Davison.

And to Sand, 2015, Contexts 5th International Sokołowsko Festival of Ephemeral Art, Sokołowsko, Poland (pages 15 and 16).

Berth An Earth, 2015, Hosptialfield, Arbroath, Scotland (pages 17 and 18).

Target, 1977, Belfast, Northern Ireland (pages 20, 21 and 22).

Hanging, 1981, Cresent Arts Centre, Belfast, Northern Ireland (pages 23, 24 and 25).

Hand to And, 2015, Performance Art + Northern Ireland, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Photograph: Jordan Hutchings.

Ash She He: The Substance of Memory

Paula Blair, Matthew Hearn and Sandra Johnston

Over a career spanning five decades, Alastair MacLennan’s work has consistently built upon a traceable system of ethical values that have informed his artistic decisions. When taken in overview, these reveal the rigour with which he has prioritized ephemeral approaches to ecological understandings of artmaking – a sensibility that has remained provocative, persuasive and timely. Since the inception of his practice in the 1970s, MacLennan’s artworks have unswervingly incorporated layers of political and social critique within his performance art actions, installations – ‘actuations’ is his preferred term – and drawings in ways that produce a range of intellectual, sensorial and affective reactions in audiences. These artistic concerns have been described by Adrian Heathfield (2018BIB-076) as visual forms of ‘actional poetics’. The poetic value, observable in the actuations, is imbedded within a doing state and is complicated by the fluctuation of meanings caught amid fleeting realities of live experiences.

Several of the chapters here have been developed through extensive conversations and interview exchanges between the writers and MacLennan; we thank him for his tremendous patience and engagement with the process. In this regard, MacLennan’s voice is present in many of the texts in ways that represent a range of his opinions across the entire span of his career. What is evident from these conversations is the scope for personal interpretation and application of his ideas as MacLennan’s voice, as a teacher, an artist and collaborator and a provocateur, is projected back from the diverse viewpoints of his former students and contemporaries in rich and thoughtful ways. In Chapter 3, this conversational mode is explicitly realized through an in-depth interview between MacLennan and Declan McGonagle. This discussion is intended to reconvene an earlier dialogue featured in the catalogue to the exhibition Is No (1988). Through the intimate conversation with MacLennan, this interview lays the groundwork of his family background and significant influences and intricacies of interrelations that have evolved through his prolific career.

The context of the Troubles in Northern Ireland is a common touchstone for encountering and unpacking MacLennan’s practice. Most contributors evolve their ideas outwards from a recognition of how this war, with its multiple terrorist factions and intersecting of British and Irish state forces all operating through an impenetrable web of collusion, has had a primary impact on the development of MacLennan’s practice. The social trauma of this conflict remains omnipresent and draws out visceral memories throughout the chapters, not least in Nick Stewart’s recollections in Chapter 4. As Heathfield (2018) has suggested, ‘[h]is work is a compassionate meditation on the various violences of human life, an acceptance of the movements of existence that swallow us all up, and a form of humble protest against the thoughtless world.’ Undoubtedly, there is a symbiosis between the emergence of his performative language and the daily realities of navigating the hostilities