BIRTH DEATH DAY

Seattle, USA : 1984

12 hour performance/installation at 911 (And/Or Gallery), Seattle, Washington.

19 February 1984


Chairs lined either side of the room, which MacLennan taped crosses and sheets of paper above, and lined with rows of glasses of water below. The floor between the chairs was strewn with paper, and divided by a large portable mirror. Pigs’ trotters and tails were suspended along each side of the mirror, while their ears lay atop a grand piano in the corner of the room. At either end of the room a chair was perched upside down – centre stage – with dead fish at their feet. MacLennan patrolled the space wearing a plastic bag of dead fish suspended from a cord around his neck, while other fish hung in the air, and others slumped in the glasses of water. His head was painted black; so too were his hands, in which he held a black-banded watch.