Onze organisations culturelles de Montréal ont officiellement endossé PACBI

Dans une forte déclaration de solidarité, onze organisations culturelles de Montréal ont officiellement endossé la Campagne palestinienne pour le boycott académique et culturel d'Israël (PACBI), soulignant ainsi leur engagement envers le mouvement mondial de Boycott, Désinvestissement et Sanctions (BDS).

Les organisations qui soutiennent cette initiative se joignent à un mouvement mondial croissant d'artistes, d'universitaires et de travailleur·euse·s culturel·le·s qui s'engagent à soutenir le peuple palestinien dans sa lutte pour la libération et l'autodétermination. Ces organisations espèrent que plus d'organismes voudront adopter PACBI partout au Québec et au Canada.

À ce jour, les organisations suivantes ont unies leurs forces pour appuyer ou réaffirmer leurs engagements à PACBI: Ada X, articule, Atelier La Coulée, Céline Bureau, Centre Clark, Centre des arts actuels SKOL, Dazibao, Metonymy Press, OBORO, PME-ART et Vidéographe.

Pour en savoir plus sur le PACBI, consultez https://www.bdsmovement.net/pacbi

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In a strong statement of solidarity, eleven cultural organizations in Montreal have officially endorsed the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), highlighting their commitment to the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The organizations supporting this initiative are joining a growing global movement of artists, academics, and cultural workers committed to supporting the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation and self-determination. These organizations hope that more groups will adopt PACBI across Quebec and Canada.

To date, the following organizations have united their efforts to support or reaffirm their commitments to PACBI: Ada X, articule, Atelier La Coulée, Céline Bureau, Centre Clark, Centre des arts actuels SKOL, Dazibao, Metonymy Press, Oboro, PME-ART and Vidéographe.

To learn more about PACBI, see https://www.bdsmovement.net/pacbi

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Excerpt from the novel-in-progress Desire Without Expectation

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I go into the kitchen to find some lunch and am surprised to find a teenage boy sitting alone at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal. He asks me who I am, and I explain that I won’t be staying long, probably no more than a week, that I’m just here renting a room. To say that his response confuses me would be an understatement, since right away he replies: “That’s probably my old room. I used to live here.”

It is completely tactless of me, and perhaps even dangerous, but without thinking I blurt out: “Did you murder your brother?”

He doesn’t seem at all disturbed by my tactlessness, has clearly heard it all before. His voice is extremely calm as he explains: “No, I didn’t murder my brother. Very sadly, my brother killed himself. He wasn’t well. My parents know this but pretend they don’t. I suppose they think there’s something shameful about suicide, something shameful about mental illness. So they pretend something happened that didn’t. My mother even told the press she’s going to write a book about it. For some reason they find it less shameful to have a son who’s a famous murderer. This aspect of their worldview makes absolutely no sense to me. I mostly live in the forest nearby, sometimes I hide here in the basement when it rains. I still have the key so when I’m hungry I come and take some food. My parents know all this but pretend they don’t. They prefer to think of me somewhere out there in the big wide world, on the lam, to think of our life like some Hollywood movie. They’ve told the police I ran far away so, for now, it seems the police aren’t looking for me around here. But I assume sooner or later they’re going to figure it out.”

I tried to understand whether or not he was lying to me and, if so, to what end. It certainly didn’t feel like a lie, as improbable as it all might sound.

I say: “Your parents just decided you murdered your brother?”

Son says: “No, the police told them I murdered my brother. And they decided to go with the official account.”

Just then we hear a key in the front door and the son says he better be going, slipping out the back before I can stop him.




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For years...

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For years I couldn’t stop writing about the oncoming fascism and then the fascism was here and I couldn’t seem to write about it anymore.


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Five epigraphs for One Yes & Many Know

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So I started writing a novel about an artist who tries to sell out. Then I realized it was a mistake to drop the novel I was already writing, when I was in the middle of it (and it had been going well.) So I went back to writing my novel about an unbeliever who attempts to find god and realizes that the true name of god is treason. Which will be, when I finish it, the final part of some kind of trilogy based loosely around the desire for utopia, a trilogy that has already begun with the publication of Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim this past September. But back to the topic of trying to sell out. I wrote one chapter and a bit of that idea before setting it aside (for now.) And also compiled a page of epigraphs which you will find below.


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At the age of forty the life I have lived so far, always pro tem, has for the first time become life itself, and this reappraisal swept away all dreams, destroyed all my notions that real life, the one that was meant to be, the great deeds I would perform, was somewhere else. I realised it was all here, banal everyday life, fully formed, and it always would be unless I did something. Unless I took one last gamble.
– Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle, Vol. 2 (A Man in Love)



I had an unhealthy respect for the artist who sells out. Not everyone can sell out, even if they want to. Over the years, I have noticed that the strength of singers like Adam Ant and Billy Idol was their ability to sell their asses and still appear to be doing precisely what they wanted.
– Julian Cope, Repossessed



I hushed it, heard my conscience in a clear voice
“Don’t forsake us to make this a career choice”
– Ka, 30 Keys



Work your ass off to change the language & dont ever get famous.
– Bernadette Mayer, Experiments



Success is the ethical quagmire par excellence of commodity culture because it jeopardizes our relation to dissent, to resistance, to saying no, as fame is precisely about what one is willing to do, how far one is willing to go, and how much (low in the form of high. Going low in order to get high) one is willing to say yes to. The road to fame is made up of assent. This is what gets you to the literal and figurative top. And this is why fame is almost always a parable about losing (not finding one’s way). About being led astray. “Making it” is not the struggle to become, as it’s always been said, but the willingness to be made.
– Masha Tupitsyn, Becoming Object



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Sam Kriss Quote

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“When, occasionally, genuinely significant things happen to Musk, Walter Isaacson largely ignores them. In May 2002, Elon’s first wife Justine gave birth to their first child, a son. They named him Nevada, because he’d been conceived at Burning Man. When Nevada was ten weeks old, he suddenly stopped breathing in his sleep. Paramedics managed to resuscitate him, but his brain had been starved of oxygen. Three days later, his parents decided to turn off his life support and let him die. You could write an entire novel about this one incident. This brash, thoughtless millionaire, with all his abstract ambitions, suddenly encountering the frailty of human life. And that was only the beginning. Elon had invited his father to visit from South Africa and meet his grandson; Errol only found out that the grandson was dead once he landed. Elon, in deep anguish, decided he wanted his violent, abusive father to stick around. He bought a house in Malibu for Errol and his new family. But things swiftly got weird. Errol’s second wife, nineteen years his junior, started to develop some sort of untoward relationship with her stepson. (Errol commented: “She saw Elon now as the provider in her life and not me.”) Meanwhile, Errol was beginning to develop some sort of untoward relationship with his own fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, Jana. (They currently have two children together.) This seedy drama, guilt and money and sex, all swirling around the death of a child. It’s a Harold Pinter play. It’s a Greek tragedy. Walter Isaacson dispenses with the whole thing in less than three pages. He ends the chapter with his grand conclusion, his final word on this intense human experience. It’s this: “Personal networks are more complex than digital ones.” The next chapter is about building rockets. So is the next one. So is the one after that.”

- Sam Kriss, Very Ordinary Men: Elon Musk and the court biographer



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possible titles

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I've been keeping this ongoing list of possible titles since 2016.

(As well, in case you don't already know, my last book, which has a really nice title, also got some really nice reviews.)

(Finally, if you're feeling extra generous and would like to help me continue writing books, you can find my Patreon here.)

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Mastodon & Bluesky

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https://mastodon.social/@Jacob_Wren
https://bsky.app/profile/jacobwren.bsky.social

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PME-ART commits to PACBI

PME-ART commits to the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) that was launched in 2004 as part of the wider Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. PACBI advocates for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, based on their continued complicity in Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights as stipulated by international law.

Solidarity with PACBI means that PME-ART will not collaborate, fund, or accept funding from the Israeli government or related funding bodies. We acknowledge that based on our organizational scale, these demands are not difficult to carry out. However we believe that it is important to consider such stances within the context of the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

We strongly encourage Montreal-based artistic groups, cultural workers, and artists to publicly support these demands and share this commitment with their members.

To learn more about PACBI, see https://www.bdsmovement.net/pacbi
This statement on the PME-ART website: https://www.pme-art.ca/en/about

Jacob Wren on Patreon

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I have been thinking of doing this for a while. I don't know to what extent it will work, but I've started a Patreon:

https://patreon.com/jacob_wren_writer

I've set it to the lowest monthly amount: $3 U.S. / $4.50 Canadian. I was trying to think of what kind of amount I could afford. I know money is tight for everyone.

I'm currently writing some kind trilogy based loosely around the desire for utopia:

Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim (2024)
Amateur Kittens Dreaming Solar Energy (2027)
Desire Without Expectation (2030)

This makes me realize I need more writing time then I've needed in the past.

If people were to sign up it would really help give me the extra time necessary to finish writing these books. For those who do so, they can read excerpts as I am writing them.

As well, as everyone knows, I'm very addicted to social media. So I'm wondering if this particular kind of addiction can help bring in any funds. (Also, a lot of people seem to be leaving social media at this moment. So Patreon could be a place for me to post things.)

In the long run I'm hoping to sign up 1,000 people. So far I'm at 7.

I know a lot of people like my books. I'm just wondering if any people like them enough to help out a bit. (My last book got some really nice reviews.)

Let's see what happens.

Jacob


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Camilla Townsend Quote

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“In the privacy of their own homes, away from the eyes of the Spaniards, what the Nahuatl speakers most often wrote was history. Before the conquest, they had a tradition called the xiuhpohualli (shoo-po-WA-lee), which meant “year count” or “yearly account,” even though Western historians have nicknamed the sources “annals.” In the old days, trained historians stood and gave accounts of the people’s history at public gatherings in the courtyards located between palaces and temples. They proceeded carefully year by year; in moments of high drama different speakers stepped forward to cover the same time period again, until all perspectives taken together yielded an understanding of the whole series of events. The pattern mimicked the rotational, reciprocal format of all aspects of their lives: in their world tasks were shared or passed back and forth, so that no one group would have to handle something unpleasant all the time or be accorded unlimited power all the time. Such performances generally recounted stories that would be of interest to the larger group – the rise of chiefs and later their deaths (timely or untimely), the wars they fought and the reasons for them, remarkable natural phenomena, and major celebrations or horrifying executions. Although certain subjects were favored, the texts were hardly devoid of personality: different communities and different individuals included different details. Political schisms were illustrated via colorful dialogue between leaders of different schools of thought. The speakers would sometimes even slip into the present tense as they delivered such leaders’ lines, as if they were in a play. Occasionally they would shout questions that eager audience members were expected to answer.”
– Camilla Townsend, Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs



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Royalties

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People often ask me how much I make from each of my books when they sell. And it's kind of a complicated calculation, so I'm never able to answer off the top of my head. But I just thought to look it up again, and thought I would share it here (if you've asked me in the past and I've given a vague answer, here is a more precise one):

PRINTED EDITIONS:
10% of List Sales from the sale of the first 3,000 copies of printed editions of the WORK;
12.5% of List Sales from the sale of 3,001-6,000 copies of the WORK;
15% of List Sales from 6,001 or more copies of the WORK.

ELECTRONIC EDITIONS:
25% of Net Sales from the sale of all electronic editions of the WORK

AUDIO EDITIONS:
25% of Net Sales from the sale of all audio editions of the WORK


(If I understand correctly, this is all after the book has sold out it's advance. As the contract clearly says the advance "will be deducted from the author’s Royalty Commissions." As well, just to be clear, this post was not meant as a criticism. It's just a question people frequently ask me.)


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