Actional Poetics – ASH SHE HE
Actional Poetics – ASH SHE HE (Book)
The Performance Actuations of Alastair MacLennan, 1971–2020
Authoritative study of the Scottish born artist Alastair MacLennan who has achieved worldwide renown as a performance artist. Includes comprehensive visual documentation of his performative practice drawn extensively from his archival resources, with essays from leading national and international scholars in the field. 350 colour illustrations.
Edition
A retrospective monograph on the pioneering performance artist and teacher Alastair MacLennan
This is the most comprehensive study of Alastair MacLennan’s extensive performance practice, nationally and internationally renowned for its contribution to the field of performance art. The essays in this collection explore MacLennan’s art practice, its influence on the Belfast art scene, and its relationships with wider art histories.
The book places MacLennan’s work in its proper historical context, featuring outstanding archival visual documentation alongside new commissioned essays and interviews, none of which have been previously published. The essays range from descriptive to interpretive: some set the work in historical context while 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 and challenging. Each writer addresses the art on their own terms, and the resulting essays provide an approachable presentation of a multilayered body of work.
Dr. Chérie Driver is a Lecturer in Art Theory at Ulster University. Driver has worked as a painter, arts administrator and as a researcher on a number of collaborative research projects in the area of ‘art and its locations’ and specializing in art in contested spaces and art and documentation.
Dr. Sandra Johnston is a visual artist from Northern Ireland active internationally since 1992, working predominantly in the areas of site-responsive performance and installation. Johnston’s actions have often involved exploring the aftermath of trauma, through developing acts of commemoration that exist as forms of testimony and empathetic encounter.
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Actional Poetics – ASH SHE HE: The Performance Actuations of Alastair MacLennan, 1971–2018
Sandra Johnston and Paula Blair
Alastair MacLennan: Troubled Time
Nick Stewart
‘Maybe you don’t need the paintbrush…?’ In Conversation
Declan McGonagle and Alastair MacLennan
Elemental qualities in the work of Alastair MacLennan
Denys Blacker
Sensible Transcendence
Chérie Driver
Alastair MacLennan: A life seen as a form of Pedagogy
Brian Connolly
‘Sometimes you need help from other people’s ghosts’: Alastair MacLennan’s multi-disciplinary and ‘instituting’ practice as civil action
Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes
Alastair MacLennan: Universal Nomad
Nigel Rolfe
Actuations: Alastair MacLennan’s Influence on Bbeyond
Brian Patterson
Tender Dwelling in the Strewn
Adrian Heathfield
What Shall We Ask For? Considering the Transformative Moment in Alastair MacLennan’s Actuations
Sandra Johnston
Death, Transience and Duration – Alastair MacLennan
Helge Meyer
Proximity and Perpetrators: Reflecting on implications of registering perpetrators in the performance art of Alastair MacLennan
Dominic Thorpe
Triple-AAA: Alastair MacLennan, Adrian Hall & André Stitt
Spectral Arc, Vanishing Point and Memoranda: Hauntology and Atemporality in Performances 2011–13
André Stitt
Precarious Aftermaths
Paula Blair
Notes on Contributors
