NEITHER NOR

120 hour non stop performance at Third Eye Centre.

25-30 January 1982

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Over the five day duration of ‘NEITHER NOR’ MacLennan circled the room, adding, carrying, and rearranging various items within the installation as time passed.

‘Walking in a circle, MacLennan marked each hour by attaching a short string to the rope between his waist and the column. The black, red and white pigments presented early man’s first triad of colours, linking this Twentieth Century work with prehistoric man. The idea of a “history of walking” printed by feet in a flour path involving subtraction of matter, is contradictorily presented as addition, lengths of strings. Two different rhythms, the faster one of feet, and the slower one of strings, form an interlocking pattern, whose ephemerality seems to negate its elaborately established importance. Neither is it important, nor unimportant.’

Text from ‘Alastair MacLennan: Is No’, ed. Stephen Snoddy, 1988.

‘The [last] day brought consistent bouts of physical and mental exhaustion, dealt with not by ‘escaping’ but by paying it attention. The end was at midnight, as in the beginning.’

Peter Hill, Aspects, No 30, Autumn 1985.