Born at the turn of the millennium and hailing from a post-industrial city in the North-East of Scotland, Mackenna’s work is dedicated 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 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 notions of 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 navigate, succumb and resist these forms the action and the anecdotes of Mackenna’s work. Considering themself an outsider in many ways, Mackenna aims to act in solidarity and empathy to others who identify this way, and educate and engage those who have not been forced to the margins of 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 genres 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, minimalism, post industrialism, metropolitanism, abandonment and ruin, digital culture and rural aesthetics.
Mackenna is a lecturer at the Directing Department of the Academy for Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam. Mackenna is also an external member of the board of the OT301 in Amsterdam, a collective of organisations for the arts, politics and subcultures. Mackenna is currently studying as a student on the MA Contemporary Art and Archaeology course at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Orkney.
Mackenna is based between Amsterdam, The Netherlands and the Orkney Isles, Scotland.