Performance Magazine n.47 1987
I SEE DANGER
Interviewed by Declan McGonagle
Alastair MacLennan
is one of Britain's major practitioners of live art. He was born in
Scotland and has lived and taught in Belfast since 1975. DECLAN McGONAGLE,
curator of The Orchard Gallery and The Foyle in Derry, talks to MacLennan
about living and working 'on the edge of Europe':
Declan McGonagle:
I think we first met when I was in third year painting at the Belfast
Art College and you came to teach in 76/77?
Alastair MacLennan:
I first visited Belfast in 1975. In Autumn of that year I started teaching
first year Fine Art at Ulster Polytechnic.
DM: I remember
you gave a slide show about work you'd done prior to coming to Belfast.
I remember very clearly, I was a painting student, that you showed slides
of very large scale paintings of objects picked up in a house in Nova
Scotia.
AM: These specific
works were painted in a small village called Indian Harbour, in Nova
Scotia. Certain objects in the environment, and in the attic of the
house I'd moved into, intrigued me. I couldn't understand them. I took
these from their immediate 'positions', painted from them, then relocated
them 'exactly' as I'd found them.
DM: That echoes
that sense of going into a situation and making use of what you find
there.
AM: With respect
to learning from and improving on a given situation, paying attention
to context is important.
DM: Could we
begin by looking at how you started to produce paintings, and then move
from painting to live work.
AM: I had a
very traditional academic Fine Art education at the Duncan of Jordanstone
College of Art in Dundee, Scotland from 1960-1965. We studied human
anatomy and did a great deal of cast and life drawing, figure painting,
portraiture and still-life work. Nearly everyone dealt with the same
issues. We worked mostly from a single, central model. Almost all the
art was figurative. The range of imagery was relatively narrow. Differences
were measurable via painterly 'handwriting' rather than by content,
though 'composition' classes were more open.
From 1966
to 1968 I studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The
situation there was utterly different. Studio practice was completely
decentralised. Student work was 'individuated'. Means and methods were
much more diverse. This made me question again the how and the what
of my art, my intentions and aspirations.
DM: Had that
been the basis of the teaching you received?
AM: No, it wasn't.
I was self-questioning and needed to query my function and purpose as
an artist. I absorbed much from my fellow students. Also, I learned
a great deal from Chicago itself. It was a violent but exciting city.
It was there I first heard of the killing of Martin Luther King. Race
riots in Chicago were bloody affairs. Underprivileged blacks lived in
hovels on the south side. Ethnic groups lived in gangland ghettoes.
I lived in a Polish section and worked three nights a week to 'get by',
as a student. The violence was palpable, but I loved the city. Students
there were politically and socially 'active'.
Towards the
end of my second year I became interested in what underpins art. I grew
curious about philosophical and theoretical questioning relative to
art making, and sought out pertinent information.
DM:
When you say information, what do you mean?
AM: If we look
for something hard enough we 'find' it, be it written material or a
personal encounter. I was drawn to attitudes contained in Zen, firstly
through my own art, secondly through literature and thirdly through
Zazen practice with a Rinzai Master. During two years I made no art
(1973-1974). Attention to living processes took over the need to engage
in the making of art objects.
DM: So it was
being rather than doing.
AM: As regards
traditional concepts of art in Western culture it was 'being' rather
than 'doing'. In the activities of daily living, being and doing were
inseparable. Events of the day were fused in relatedness. This first-hand
experience, for me, was crucial. It still is today.
DM: It's still
there, but at that time did that mean there was no product?
AM: During the
indicated two year period, at various stages, I had temporary urges
to paint. I didn't. At the end of this time I again made art objects,
but also experimented with ritualised actions and processes we're involved
in everyday, and made moving 'painting'.
DM: I remember
seeing your performances where objects were also central and not subsidiary
props, the focus was on the objects, on you and the objects, I don't
know if you actually use the term, but is part of the idea activating
painting? Was there a sense of dissatisfaction with the two-dimensional
rendering of objects...?
AM: There was
such a dissatisfaction, not so much with the activity itself as with
the inordinately distorted value and meaning accredited to it in the
art world. Questions were: How was art to 'behave' in society? How to
reconcile discrepancies between what art 'was' and how it was 'utilised'
by the machinations of mediating art means? I had misgivings about the
art world itself, with its pompous, vacuous humbuggery, money lending
and real estate deals, and wished to make art a living process without
the necessity of physical residue for sale.
DM: Is that
then an attempt to bypass the traditional means of mediation?
AM: Yes. I realise
mediating means are always present. Some artists attempt to avoid their
clutches. Others rush towards them. Progress isn't linear. It spirals.
Emphasis could
be on artists redressing the imbalance of mediation's control over societal
processing of their work.
DM: Is it then
necessary for artists to have to take on board, take control of, the
means of mediation?
AM: Certainly,
it's a question of realisation on the part of artists. Some are like
sheep, led to the slaughter. Others turn the experience on its head.
DM: It always
seemed to me, maybe you can comment on this, the problems about art
in society are not so much to do with the production of art, as with
the expectations that artists themselves are led to believe they should
have for how that art should work, how it should meet society with its
preconditioned social responses.
AM: This problem
can be dealt with within education. Viewing the current 'state of art'
I doubt if it is, effectively. Artists need to constantly unlearn and
re-educate themselves about expectations of 'self' and societal preconditioning
of assumed public response.
DM: What art
should be, what it should do and its function - in our society, Western
society, in a way operates within an incredibly narrow band of expectation
of what art is, which is itself a product of the narrow expectations
of how we should live?
AM: The art
which society 'gets' mirrors how it does and doesn't reflect, and for
reasons other than it thinks. My art practice differs from others.
DM: So in forming
that art practice - I'm not suggesting that it is fully formed - I mean
it's obviously a growing development, but in getting to the position
to be able to ask the right questions, you mentioned going after a philosophical
base for your practice to be involved in that activity, but are there
identifiable moments you could point to either in terms of seeing other
art, experiencing work by other artists or something you were doing
yourself at that time that motivated you?
AM: In Chicago
I became dissatisfied with the seeming gulf between the world of 'ethics'
(and its lack), and the world of 'aesthetics'. The society I lived in
was violent. It seemed not enough, inappropriate and escapist to retreat
making 'beautifying' work utterly detached from the pulse and beat of
contextual living. While there, I read the epic work Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman. It advocated an inclusiveness, not an exclusive view
of art and society. I read a great deal. In Chicago my politics grew
to the left. More recently, in Belfast, art (for me) has become 'skill
in action, where skill is the resolution of conflict'.
DM: How did
you relate the questioning that was going on within your own work to
teaching situations?
AM: Teaching
is a main artery in my art activity. I'm an 'outsider'. When I came
to Belfast I wished to open up possibilities for students. We worked
on individual and group projects, using well nigh any and every material.
On the one hand I wished to overcome a prejudice that art is only made
using exclusive 'purpose made' materials, and on the other, to constantly
question and challenge presumptions about art's 'private' and public
function. One of my first projects with students in 1975 was to use
the streets of Belfast and the public transport system for an Art March
between two differing institutions during Queens Festival.
Being an outsider
has advantages and disadvantages. My parents are/were from North West
Scotland (with Irish connections). I was brought up in the South. Cultural
differences were like chalk and cheese. Growing up, I felt an 'outsider'
looking in, and an 'insider' looking out. There were doubletake overlays.
These I now use.
DM: Could I
just interject a reference there that may be useful. People living on
islands off the West Coast of Donegal talk about going out to the mainland
and going into the island, in a geographical sense that parallels what
you are describing, which is a state of mind. Would you say you carry
that sort of sensibility with you?
AM: Yes, I put
it to work. Coming to Belfast could be seen as choosing a 'marginalised'
context to live in. Many see Belfast as the edge of Europe. There are
edges and 'edges'. The post industrial age is one of decentralisation.
In The Third Way, Toffler discussed, among other deaths, that of urbanisation.
'Big' is no longer beautiful. Concepts which formulated centres are
now obsolete. New wave communications and information media now contribute
to the disintegrating stranglehold of centres built by, and for, redundant
technologies and attitudes. 'Centres' are becoming peripheries, peripheries
. . . 'centres'. Future/present provinces might be more at the 'hub'
than New York, London or Paris.
DM: The de-industrialisation
of today is coming about largely because of new technologies. In a curious
way there could be a paradoxical benefit coming from a momentum that
isn't necessarily a good one in general but which can hopefully be
turned from a disadvantage to an advantage.
AM: We're at
an awkward stage. Simultaneously we're living the death of industrialisation
and feeling birth pangs of a new civilisation, experiencing more the
former than the latter at present. It's a time for perseverance and
insight, turning whatever negatives we can into positives. It's a period
of great difficulty and personal tragedy for many thousands of families
out of work, through no fault of their own. Many are willing, but because
of 'circumstances beyond their control', feel unable to contribute.
Without a 'job', many feel worthless and without identity.
As an inverted
negative, external difficulties may force us to tap deeper sources of
identity and personal worth within ourselves and our cultural context
than we'd normally be 'required' to dredge up, call forth or invoke.
If and when we can make this 'transition', advantage is there.
DM: There is
always a mistake made that because situations which are geographically
on the edge, or marginal, where things happen in a different way, or
with a different rhythm, there is a sense of nothing happening at all,
or if you come from the centre carrying a certain urban rhythm with
you, to, say a rural context, you'd feel there is nothing going on.
I suppose the idea is to be receptive to the rhythm and the momentum
and try to go with that, wherever it may occur.
AM: Yes, otherwise
we don't learn from the situation we're in. What seems appropriate in
one context may be utterly inappropriate in another. It's important
to encourage intrinsic worth in a locality, rather than callously 'graft
it on' from the outside. This applies to politics and art, here in Northern
Ireland, as elsewhere.
DM: Well you
see, just taking that point on in another sort of way, a process that
is now taking place in mainland Britain was actually taking place in
Northern Ireland in the early 70s. It brought forward that de-industrialisation.
Unemployment in some areas of Northern Ireland was always high anyway,
but, in a curious sort of way I feel as if we are ten years ahead of
other parts of these islands. We may be more prepared to deal with that
creeping situation.
AM: 'The darkest
hour's before the dawn'. People here developed resilience sooner. It
was needed.
DM: It is quite
clear that the situation is that in large conurbations in Britain people
find it very difficult to deal with that de-industrialisation process,
there is a sense in which the powers that be are papering over the cracks.
There is a whole area of discussion there about the edge becoming the
centre, but the centre isn't one location anymore, it's where particularly
strong things can and do happen.
AM: History
'wallpapers' truth. The seams don't meet. A point on a circumference
anywhere is a centre (in its own right). Take electric circuitry. Press
a light switch in Tokyo, Bombay, or Paris. There's instant information.
Everywhere and 'nowhere's' the centre. It's right where we sit.
DM: So if you
use the term information, you could mean information with a small 'i'
to include art?
AM: Certainly.
May I recall some lines?
... There are
no (innately) artistic means. All means are viable on condition. An
artist makes art the whole of life, not a part. Is a man a farmer if
he nurtures a furrow but neglects the field? The whole needs careful
attention throughout. Painting is seen as an art activity. Breathing
is not. Which is the root, which a result? Art purifies action. It is
within the ordinary. It reflects what is. Real art requires what intermediary?
It perseveres through changes. It transmutes pain and pleasure. It rests
nowhere. It renders what is difficult effortlessly. It shows the invisible
through the discernible. Pure art is in action devoid of 'self'. The
purest art is the most essential. Its form is to content as skin to
body. Aesthetics alone are a surface affair. Real art embraces 'everything',
rejecting nothing. Discrimination arises in clarifying self to receive
what 'is'. . . and so forth. I acknowledge most of it.
DM: The underlying
idea seems to be not to put art into a linear or hierarchical view of
cultural activities.
AM: To someone
unacquainted with water, snow, ice and steam would seem like three unrelated
materials, rather than one substance in three differing states as a
result of specific conditions. These conditions can change. I query
unthinking adherence to questionably fixed, arbitrary, and 'applied'
values in art. What and where's the underlying 'substance'? How fixed
is it?
DM: You make
performances, but you also make drawings, you also make installations
and you make objects, so there is no sense in which you invalidate how
your practice is mediated?
AM: As much
as possible I make performance/installations for particular locations,
allowing the nature of the locality itself to 'inform' the work. This
also pertains to some drawings I make.
DM: So it's
really horses for courses. It's a question of what is appropriate in
a given situation.
AM: Yes, I think
much current art is repressive in spite of innovative cross-over techniques
and manifold availabilities. In Scotland there is a phrase - CAULD KALE
HET AGAIN - cold soup hot again. Inappropriate mediation 'neuters' art.
In this politically conservative decade what's happened to art as political
critique? Where's the bite, stomach and teeth?
DM: It's very
interesting how you make references back to a particular context.
AM: The further
back we go. the further forward we come.
DM: Well it's
also not taking a linear view of time because with a linear view of
time there is a hierarchy of achievement which puts us at the pinnacle.
AM: The pinnacle's
the tip of the iceberg. The interest's in subterranean contents rising
to 'surface'.
DM: In a sense
there is a simultaneity about culture whether it is from 5,000 years
ago or now because, once you are aware of it, it's alive and you have
to deal with it.
AM: All our
pasts and potential futures intersect in the present. We are custodians
now. Ours is the individual and collective responsibility. The poet
Sorley McLean, in order to preserve them, translates ancient Gaelic
legends into English, writes his own poetry in Gaelic and warns of atomic
submarines on the Isle of Skye. His audience is growing.
DM: So it's
possible to deal with ugliness, negativity, all the things that are
destructive or potentially destructive. It's this idea of a reversal,
turning disadvantage or the negative into a positive.
AM: Yes, though
it's foolish to think one's 'arrived', even when home.
DM: Is yours
a sensibility formed beyond art?
AM: The world
is raw. Do we 'cook' truth or lay it bare? On stage is a lonely place
to fall. Better to work from a lowly position than fall from a height
with a crash.
DM: That is
carried out in your practice as a living being now, but also as a maker
of art. How did you actually operate in particular situations that you
have been in. Like Nova Scotia or Belfast or wherever?
AM: As a young
man I wished to travel, live and work as an artist, and learn what I
could. Some of my 'main' stops were Chicago, Nova Scotia, Vancouver,
Japan (briefly), back to Scotland, the north of England and Belfast.
DM: Now, none
of those situations could be described in the sense we have been talking
about as the centre.
AM: True, though
I frequently visit 'centres' to make art works. By choice I prefer to
live away from 'centres'. I go there for business purposes, to see exhibitions,
to visit friends, then to leave. In New York especially one sees the
sad sight of ageing artists who've been there for twenty-odd years,
drawn to the 'centre' like flies to a light. They came to 'make it'.
It's so expensive to live there, they have to work two or three jobs
to survive. There's no time to make art, let alone significant work.
Fame? You can't eat it, sleep with it, walk or talk with it. It's ephemeral
and delusive. An illusion. It's best to make good work where you are.
Let things sort themselves out. The centre of the art world's wherever
you breathe.
DM: There was
a set of conditions applying in Belfast, for instance, that didn't apply
in Nova Scotia or Vancouver, and that was it's geographically on the
edge, but it was politically and socially on the edge because of the
political violence/political situation, and it was as if something had
burst through in violent form here, come through a sort of surface.
How did you find coming into that, because in other situations you would
have to work very hard to get in touch with the sort of ideas or realities
that run through your work. Whereas in a sense when it comes down to
essential issues - as it did in the early and mid-70s in Belfast because
it was dangerous - did you find, because it was so extreme, that it
was good for the work?
AM: Belfast
taught me a lot. I'm very grateful. It cut through me. Principles underlying
the Troubles are discernible elsewhere. Here they're extreme, clear-cut
and physical.
DM: There is
a tangible expression.
AM: Exactly.
DM: It's certainly
invisible in the projected 'centres'.
AM: There are
major differences in degrees and concepts of 'containment'.
DM: Yes that's
right, it's a feeling I got very strongly when I was in London. The
control mechanisms are just as much in place there as they are here.
The advantage we have here is that we can see the working parts.
AM: Yes, everything's
down to earth. Very basic. I encounter great warmth and generosity in
people, from both sides of the community. This keeps me here. On the
other hand the politics of violence are so emphatic they call into question
one's whole purpose and function (as an artist), and what that constitutes.
DM: So actually
it was a 'good' situation for questioning.
AM: Extremely
good. One doesn't wish one's art to be icing on the cake, not necessary
in the first place. In Belfast, constant issues are life and death (as
they are elsewhere). Here these issues are 'foregrounded'. Some artists
'stonewall' this information, others capitulate in the face of it. I'd
like to deal with it.
DM: One of the
first things you did was in the foyer of the Art College, and with
other things that you've done, you have placed yourself in situations
beyond Art Institutions and Art Institutional frameworks.
AM: It can be
appropriate at times because of the overly refined, self-protective
and reflective nature of these contexts.
DM: Well does
that mean that Art Institutions should be seen as controlling mechanisms?
AM: They are.
These institutions are not unlike the Civil Service - more concerned
with preserving and protecting themselves than those they're supposed
to serve. Left to their own devices they set the climate for unimaginative,
predictable conveyor-belt art. Well-timed, deftly judged doses of lone
'anarchy' are useful in offsetting the trait. If a grounded 'plane
can urinate tea, what might sculpture do?
DM: Obviously
Art Institutions are set up with combinations of private and public
funding which leads to possibilities as well as limits.
AM: By and large
they're more concerned with capital and administration than with real
education. Some artists can work within such norms, and push beyond
them. Because institutions so easily stifle creativity, I'd encourage
students, in a whole range of ways, to test the perimeters of their
situations for creative breakthrough.
DM: It's definitely
been a major part of your working practice that you relate more to people
than to institutions.
AM: My first
concerns in the Art Institution are the students I teach, the art they
make and the course I run. The carpet's pulled from below presumption.
I hope the service is beneficial. The bottom line's people (by the end
of the day).
DM: That idea
of drawing back the carpet so that you can see both beauty and its reverse
has led to problems in some situations in relation to performance pieces.
How did you feel when the media picked things up and there has then
been negative national media exposure? Does that depress you, energise
you or what?
AM: To a certain
extent. With respect to tabloid misrepresentation of an earlier work
at the Third Eye Centre, a local Tory politician was looking for means
whereby to challenge the use of Arts Council funding. He manipulated
the 'truth' of what took place. He was more than economical with it.
He hid it. The press published amusing and cynical distortions of fact.
Explanatory statements were deliberately misquoted. In spite of media-whip, hoop-la hype, the work was completed. By the end, from a variety
of sources, I received positive support.
DM: The problem
increases in direct proportion to the size of the institution involved
with the project. It only becomes a serious and substantial problem
if the institution is locked in to certain rhythms of our society, but
you've always seemed to me to be as liable to travel to the other side
of the world to work with another artist in a back alley as to work
in a major museum.
AM: What's important
is quality of relationship, wherever it's found. Life's as real in a
back alley as in a museum. Perhaps more so. There's less to protect.
There's more to life than security. There's freedom!
DM: Like me
you also engage in mediation and administration processes because you
are looking after the MA students within an ever expanding institution.
How do those two areas of activity reside together?
AM: I take things
on a day to day, week by week basis. I don't rely on past achievements
or reputation. Individually and collectively we're only as good as work
we currently make. The institution is growing but I work with individuals.
One goes with or against the grain. I distrust institutions. Looking
ahead I see danger. I work with students, Fine Art and the Course. They
make it worthwhile. Recent achievements have been very substantial.
Negatives turn positive. Future/present is here.
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