The Artists Newsletter June 1997
EYE TO EYE
Mark Dawes In Conversation With Alastair MacLennan
Mark
Dawes: Did you ever want to be anything else other than an artist?
Alastair MacLennan:
Since a child I've wanted to be an artist.
MD: Is there
anyone who has influenced you throughout your life and who still influences
you now?
AMacL; ...my
mother, who died last year; Edward Hopper, through his late canvases
and Joshu Sasaki Roshi, Rinzai Zen Master and teacher.
MD: If you
had to use your creative energy to make things which were strictly functional,
what would you make?
AMacL. Trusting
inter-relations.
MD: What draws
you to Belfast?
AMacL: I'm
attracted to public and private unfinished business, where political,
social and cultural schisms are, wherever they exist. Belfast is a place
I can usefully work in.
MD: You have
been asked to represent Ireland at the Venice Biennale. Do you feel
a concurrent request to represent Irishness?
AMacL: Irishness,
like Scottishness, Englishness or any 'otherness' is not a finished,
self-contained, pigeon-holed fixity of geography and history, but an
evolving entity of positively indeterminate potential in the world.
MD: Have you
ever felt threatened by the consequences of making your work?
AMacL: Yes.
When I first started making long actuations, I had no pre-knowledge
whether mind and body interrelations would survive intact; I wanted
to experience what manifests beyond mental and physical exhaustion,
and the attendant psychological stresses. Other live works were made
on the streets of Belfast. In this context, where imagery was employed
and is politically, socially and culturally questioning and questioned,
dice are loaded.
MD: What tends
to obstruct you in the making of your work? Do you remove obstacles
or seek an alternative path?
AMacL. There
are obstructions and obstructions. The most subtle, instructive obstructions
are more mental than physical. Many obstacles cease to be such if viewed
from an altered mental viewpoint. What first presents itself as a difficulty
can later become a vehicle for creative evolution. It may be beneficial
to negotiate a problem rather than avoid it. Escapism, in and of itself,
is no real solution. Actual freedom can only ever be directly experienced
in the present.
MD: In relation
to the question about obstacles, I was suddenly reminded of the events
at Drumcree last year. I asked purely in connection with your psychological
processes of making work as an artist. But maybe the same question has
currency in a broader field in relation to the psychological processes
of social conflict?
AMacL. It has.
There are various views on how to deal with the psychological process
of social conflict. Michel Foucault says we don't live in democracies
if by democracy we mean "...the effective exercise of power by a population
which is neither divided nor hierarchically ordered in classes...."
He suggests our political role is to expose the operations of institutions
so that political violence, operating covertly through them, be unmasked,
so that we can combat it openly. He sees human justice as a 'construct,'
as class oppression of one class by an other. Noam Chomsky says we need
to "...create a humanistic social theory that is based, if possible,
on some firm and humane concept of the human essence or human nature....
" We also need "...to understand the nature of power and oppression
and terror and destruction in our society and to combat them..."
He says it's important "...we know what impossible goals we're trying
to achieve, if we hope to achieve some of the possible goals..." Samuel
Beckett locates meaning through creatively, positively re-presenting
societal disjuncture of meaning through literary manipulation of language.
Traditional Western religion is on the wane. It no longer sufficiently
convinces, with its hidebound views of humanity's place in the universe.
In postmodern times, some seek 'purpose' through DIY spiritual healing
groups, eschewing dogmas and embracing core, pluralistic teachings from
a diversity of sources. Kristamurti recommends we all, individually
and collectively, practise bare attention of mind. This serves to dissolve
all unnecessary subject and object binary splits, which cause conflict
throughout our private and public lives.
Alastair MacLennan
is an artist based in Belfast.
Mark Dawes
is an artist and writer based in Glasgow. An actuation is a performance/installation
lasting up to 144 hours non-stop. Most are completed without eating
or sleeping, while executing a range of ritually controlled actions.
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