Boycott of the Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art

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We, MFAs Against Genocide, are a collective of recent and prospective graduates in the Montreal arts community and are reaching out to you as you are a signatory to PACBI. As a collective, we are organizing an institutional and individual boycott of the Stephen and Claudine Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art Fellowship. We are asking for your support in order to increase our pressure, and to call on artists, cultural workers, academics, and institutions to refuse together to be complicit in artwashing.

The fellowship, which is awarded annually to Concordia and UQAM studio arts graduate students, is funded by Claridge Inc; Stephen Bronfman's Montreal-based private equity firm that, in 2015, opened a parallel firm in Tel Aviv focused on Israeli tech investments. These investments include Cyberbit, a a cyber security, warfare, and espionage company that lists the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as one of their key clients. Claridge Isreal is also invested in D-fend Solutions, which provides counter-drone technology to clients including the Israeli ministry of defense and the United States departments of War and Homeland Security. In August of this year La Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec announced that it is in the process of selling off its investments (valued between $400M - $600M CAD) in Claridge Israel; we believe it is long past time for our institutions to do the same and divest from the Isreali occupation and genocide. For more information about the award, the campaign, and our demands, please see our website: https://mfasagainstgenocide.cargo.site/

the art that strikingly knows it’s own futility

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"Where is the art that strikingly knows it’s own futility but stumbles forward compellingly, anyway, because as an artist you have no choice?"

(From my 2011 manifesto: Manifesto for Confusion, Struggle and Conflicted Feelings.)



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Some favourite records of my 2025 (so far)

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Back in July I did a list of Some favourite books of my 2025 (so far). It occurs to me now that, around the same time, I could have also done a list of Some favourite records of my 2025. So this is coming a bit late (and a bit too close to my end of year list.) But I'm doing it now because Bandcamp Friday is in two days (Oct 3rd), so you might want to support some of these amazing artists. (Also, as is my habit, some of these records didn't come out during 2025.)

Moses Sumney – Sophcore
Adrián de Alfonso – Viator
Quinton Barnes – Code Noir
Quinton Barnes – Black Noise
Elle Barbara’s Black Space – Word on the Street
Nourished By Time – The Passionate Ones
DJ K – Radio Libertadora !
Pink Siifu – BLACK’!ANTIQUE
Qur'an Shaheed – Pulse
Destroyer – Dan’s Boogie
Frog Eyes – The Open Up
Fievel Is Glauque – Rong Weicknes


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listening

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For a lot of the past year or two, I've mostly been listening to the same four records by Jeff Parker over and over again: The New Breed, Suite for Max Brown, Forfolks and The Way Out of Easy.

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One year of Dry Your Tears plus a review by Junction Reads

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Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim was published exactly one year ago. Thanks so much to everyone who read it. And everyone who wrote about it. It’s been really beautiful to receive so many different and insightful reactions. For example, Junction Reads has just written this very nice review. You can of course order it here.

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PME-ART's Relay-Interview Party / Thursday October 2nd, 7pm-9pm

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Relay-Interview Party
Thursday October 2nd, 7pm-9pm at the MAI Café Bar (3680 Rue Jeanne-Mance) / FREE ADMISSION

Beautiful changes are happening for Montréal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART, both internal and external. Beginning now, PME-ART will open each new season with a Relay-Interview Party. This is a chance for the community to meet us, meet each other, and get a taste for how the PME-ART process works. It’s also a chance to think alongside us about the theme for our upcoming cycle of creation: How Does Change Happen?

Relay-Interview is a ridiculously simple game for having unexpected conversations, like a relay race but for asking and answering questions. Please join us on Thursday October 2nd at the MAI Café Bar (3680 Rue Jeanne-Mance) from 7-9 PM for questions, answers, snacks, and drinks. Come to learn Relay-Interview (an open-source activity which anyone can use for their own artistic processes) and begin our season with us - which is also the official start of PME-ART's next evolution!

If you have ever been interested in co-creating with us, auditioning, or proposing activities, this is the perfect space to tell us who you are, what drives your heart, and how we could walk together in the future. All disciplines, identities, and experience levels are welcome.

Facebook event

PME-ART now has an Instagram. And you can also subscribe to the PME-ART newsletter here.

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Two Montreal events in September 2025

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1) Saturday September 20th at 7pm - The Air Contains Honey at Douze Douze
2) Tuesday September 23rd, 7pm / doors at 6:30 - The Longest Way to Eat a Melon at Rocket Science Room


1)
The Air Contains Honey performs only once a year. This year it will be on Saturday September 20th at 7pm at Sanctuaire Saint-Jude (10120, av. d'Auteuil) as part of Douze Douze, presented by LA SERRE - arts vivants. (Saint Jude is the patron saint of lost causes and hopeless situations, which I believe fits with our vibe.) The Air Contains Honey will start at 7 sharp, and we have to be finished by 7:45 so everyone can join the Burning BRASs Band on parade. This is your one Air Contains Honey chance in 2025 (and its free admission.) There are also many other amazing Douze Douze performances on September 20th - from noon to midnight - which you can find out about here. You can also watch some demos of an earlier version of The Air Contains Honey here. (Album coming in 2026.)

Facebook event

The Air Contains Honey―co-founded by Adam Kinner and Jacob Wren―is an “orchestra” that mixes professional and amateur musicians in search of a warmth and community spirit they may or may not find. All of their songs follow the same basic structure: a quote sung four times, an instrumental break, and then the same quote sung another four times. For the audience, as well as for the performers, this is a chance to hear an orchestra in the process of discovering its sound as it goes.

The Air Contains Honey’s lineup is ever shifting but the performance will likely feature some or all of the following members: Pietro Amato, Patrick Conan, Claudia Fancello, Michael Feuerstack, James Goddard, Thanya Iyer, Adam Kinner, Liam O’Neill, Lara Oundjian, Pompey, Rebecca Rehder, Catherine Fatima, Frédérique Roy, Mulu Tesfu and Jacob Wren.


2)
Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross launches The Longest Way to Eat a Melon
at Rocket Science Room (170 Rue Jean-Talon O #204)
Tuesday September 23rd, 7pm / doors at 6:30
Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross will be in conversation with Carmen Faye Mathes
Plus an opening reading by Jacob Wren

Facebook event

Equal parts melody and malaise, The Longest Way to Eat a Melon charts the activities of a cast of speakers who all grapple in their own ways with what it takes to conjure a self in the midst of discordance. A brain argues with a non-brain about how to remain productive from a place of exhaustion; two supernaturally inclined twins named Han are separated at birth; and an emerging artist overwhelmed by possibility considers how best to transform a melon into a breakthrough work of art. Incorporating elements of fable, surrealism, satire, and art and cultural criticism, these stories have a playful peculiarity to them, an interweaving of self-deprecation and curiosity, of woe and hope, of absurdity and humanity. Reader, you will want to savor every bite.

“The cats begin coming through her window. And she feeds them – of course she does – to please nature, to please all animals, to please the mystics, to please the menace, to please the gods. Two at first, then six, then ten, their tawny stripes blending with the dappled light through the waving blinds. Q is friendly with them, even if it is true that she does not know what they get up to in the night. She is learning about and cultivating this kind of acceptance. Violences, valences. They purr and are energetic, even if their company is not the same as friendship, not the same as romantic love. They do have a certain terrible unknowability about them. Q entertains this even while, deep down, she feels fear.”
― Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross, The Longest Way To Eat A Melon

Booksaredeadly's favourite books of 2024

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Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is one of Booksaredeadly's favourite books of 2024.


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Jacob Wren reads from his books

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Videos of me reading from and talking about my recent books:

Polyamorous Love Song Launch Reading
Polyamorous Love Song Interview
Rich and Poor Launch Reading
Rich and Poor Interview
Authenticity is a Feeling Launch Reading
Jacob Wren Introduces Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim


I recently posted on Instagram: "For the past few years I’ve been trying to figure out if there are ways for me to increase the readership of my books..." And one of the replies was: "I get it! What about videos? Your face talking to the camera? I can’t say what it would do for book sales, but you have a lot of followers already so reels could get good traction. When I go to your profile, I can see what kind of books you *read* but I don’t get a sense of what your books would be like or why I might need to get one. I think about this all the time for myself, so I’m just brainstorming out loud! Or pinning posts about your own books to the top row?" This is probably good advice regarding my use of Instagram. However, I would likely require technical assistance so instead I'm doing this. All of these videos, and much else, can also be found at: Jacob Wren Links



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the reason I find easiest to understand

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This is a chapbook written by me and published by above/ground press:

https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2024/03/new-from-aboveground-press-press-from.html

It came out last year. This is how it starts:

“Writing comes easily to me, while I find most other things in life exceedingly difficult. This is often a problem with writers. The truth of what they write is deeply shaded by a writerly distance from life which is also often connected to various forms of loneliness. Writers are often not the best people when it comes to understanding either community or solidarity. Maybe I should only speak for myself. Certain kinds of religious conversions bring one directly into community with others who are similarly converted. As you might have already guessed, I lean rather heavily into not wanting to be part of any club that might have me as a member. Religion has always been one of the places people look to for community. As has often been noted, in our current world, community can be rather hard to come by and even harder to maintain. One of the many reasons religion hasn’t disappeared, as was not so long ago predicted, is it allows its adherents to mainline a sense of community. This is the reason I find easiest to understand.

It is difficult to imagine how anything secular could generate the same intensities of community that religion does. Such intensities are also forms of power which are easily abused. Yet when certain kinds of atheists fail to understand how powerful a genuine sense of [spiritual] community can be, it is as if they are willing themselves to understand nothing. Nonetheless, I somehow know that religion will never be a solution for me. How exactly do I know this? I don’t think I’m writing a book about religion, but if I am it is about the furthest thing I can imagine from anything I previously thought I might someday do. And yet in various moments in my life I have felt that in order for the left to win it needs to find ways to connect to something one might call spirituality. A sense of the sacred. As an unbeliever I am not really the person best able to figure out how we might do this. Yet maybe it is the person who truly doesn’t know who is able to ask the most genuine and genuinely difficult questions. I am writing this book because I truly don’t know. (Here again we come back to the question of doubt.)”