FELT CROSSES, FALSE TEETH

Vancouver, Canada : 1983

12 hour non stop performance/installation at Metro Media – noon to midnight.

9 February 1983


MacLennan – naked with his head painted red, his ankles and pelvis black – laid out and drew on politically left and right wing newspapers. The space held a reconfiguration of the room’s original contents alongside his own materials: a hanging rolled up carpet, a draped projection screen, a suspended piano and furniture; newspapers, felt crosses, false teeth.

‘MacLennan recalls that when he rolled the carpet up, the marking on the floor presented a kind of landscape. This in turn led to dismantling the screen and using it as a form of ‘sail’. The light produced dark shadows. which in turn made for uncertainty as to where surfaces were.’

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