Born at the turn of the millennium of Scottish-Italian descent and hailing from a post-industrial city in the North-East of Scotland, Mackenna (they / them) dedicates their work to the intersectional exploration of outsiders in society, and giving voice and form to their lives and struggles. Mackenna’s main practices are those of a theatre director, lighting designer, scenographer, sound designer and musician.
Believing that the human species in its current form is doomed to end in the near future, Mackenna works to develop a body of work that contributes to the modern mythology of the contemporary world. Dancing on the borders between fact and fiction, Mackenna’s work combines sociological analysis, nihilistic existentialism and radically progressive idealism to give form to living portraits of scarred individuals, struggling in the dark and crying for help. Forgotten pasts, hidden presents and lost futures are the backdrop for their lives, and how they transgress, resist and occasionally succumb to these environments forms the action and the anecdotes of Mackenna’s work. Considering themself an outsider in many ways, they operate in intersectional solidarity and with empathy towards others who identify this way, and educate and engage those who have not been forced to the margins of contemporary society. Their work shows our species hurtling towards destruction, searching for relief and repair, dancing on the ruins of a rotten way of life.
Light, space and sound play a crucial role in Mackenna’s work. They are heavily inspired by musical styles such as noise, drone, industrial, metal and folk. Their work as a designer is highly influenced by the aesthetics and spaces of subcultures, and styles such as brutalism, post-industrialism, cult, abandonment and ruin, digital culture and rural aesthetics.
Mackenna is a lecturer and tutor on the BA Theatre Directing course of the Academy for Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam. They are currently studying MA Contemporary Art and Archaeology at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Orkney, focusing on the archaeology of gender, the archaeology of genocide and archaeoacoustics.
Mackenna is based between Amsterdam, The Netherlands and the Orkney Isles, Scotland.
