Bela Shayevich writing about Camp Migizi

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Indigenous groups leading the movement against Line 3 include the Giniw Collective, founded by Tara Houska; Winona LaDuke’s Honor the Earth; the Rise Coalition and environmental organization MN350, both founded by Nancy Beaulieu; and Camp Migizi. To “deal with” the protesters, Enbridge opened an escrow account to reimburse Minnesota state and local agencies for the cost of policing their private interests. After Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources, which issued the permits for Line 3, law enforcement agencies received the largest payout from the escrow fund. Conflicts between protesters and the specially formed Northern Lights Task Force escalated to the police using LRADs (long range acoustic devices, also known as sound cannons), helicopters, rubber bullets, tear gas, and techniques they referred to as “pain compliance.” All this was paid for by Enbridge, and planned for in collaboration with Minnesota law enforcement based on case studies from Standing Rock.

Out of approximately nine hundred Line 3–related arrests since 2020, at least ninety-one protesters were charged with felonies. As of March 2022, sixty-six felony charges remained open. These numbers do not include the charges against Indigenous activists transferred to tribal courts. Felony charges, which vary from state to state but typically apply to violent crime and carry heavy penalties, are largely unprecedented for ecological protest. Direct actions along Line 3 were uniformly passive, involving no violence or property damage. Under most circumstances, such actions would result in the relatively minor misdemeanor charge of trespassing. But prosecutors wanted to create deterrents, and found creative ways to charge protesters with more serious crimes. Water protectors were charged with “assisted suicide” for climbing into and occupying sections of unused pipe, and “felony theft” for costing Enbridge money in the form of work stoppages by locking themselves to equipment or fences. Both carry penalties of up to ten years in prison. Meanwhile, a number of Line 3 activists subjected to “pain compliance” have sustained permanent facial paralysis in the form of Bell’s palsy.

As of January 2022, Enbridge had paid out $4.8 million to fund anti-protest policing.

Imagine if all these resources — the state’s, the corporation’s, law enforcement’s, the lawyers’ — went toward averting the mass extinction coming for us all, instead.


- from Bela Shayevich's article Migizi Will Fly




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PME-ART in 2022

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The only basis for truth is self-contradiction. The universe contradicts itself, for it passes on. Life contradicts itself, for it dies. Paradox is nature’s norm. That’s why all truth has a paradoxical form.
- Fernando Pessoa, The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

Inspiration presents itself to me in the form of anxiety.
- Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

When I was 27, the concept of the washed up older guy seemed very entertaining. Now I’m starting to think that old age could be a lot more fun. Because really what have we got to lose?
- Lloyd Cole

To state the obvious, this is such a strange time to be making live performance. I think I've performed in front of a live audience maybe four or five times in the last three years. In general, I don't perform as much as I used to, but this is of course considerably less than any time I can remember in my life. As well, I haven't left Montreal since February 2020. The last line of my bio used to be: "He travels internationally with alarming frequency and frequently writes about contemporary art." Currently, neither of those things are particularly true. (The current last line in my bio: "His internet presence is often defined by a fondness for quotations." This is of course very true.) I'm sure I'll tour again in the future but lately I've really been asking myself to what degree I'm going to return to it. The environmental impact of taking so many airplanes weights heavily on my ongoing questions about how to proceed. I still think I believe in live performance but what is the right model to make it happen? And are there new models that perhaps haven't yet occurred to me?

This past year PME-ART did perform our project Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la répétition at FTA. This was a new version of our 2014 project Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la mélancolie. The first time we rewrote Fernando Pessoa. This time we rewrote Susan Sontag. (With eight years between the two versions.) I have some vague plan to write more about these experiences in the near future. Let's see if that happens. In many ways I think I'm still prcoessing it all.

But what I have been thinking about the most as the year draws to a close is that, finally, after many years of working to make it happen (it took so much longer then I ever thought it would), we finally got a new PME-ART website online:

www.pme-art.ca

It used to be that, when people asked me what PME-ART was, I was never completely sure how best to explain it. (The short explanation I often gave: PME-ART is about being yourself in a performance situation - about the awkwardness and paradox of attempting to do so - and about working collaboratively on a specific theme for a rather long time. For example: we worked almost ten years on the theme of "hospitality.") And yet now there is a website and a book that might (or might not) help people understand what it's all about. (The book has also been translated into French by Daniel Canty.) I look at the website and ask myself: what is it all about? This thing that I've spent so much of my life doing. This thing that has taken up so much of my time for the past twenty-five years.

As I wrote earlier in the year: "Looking over all the projects we've done since 1998 gives me such a strange feeling. What exactly do all these projects have in common? Would it be better if they had more in common with each other? Or less? [...] So many decisions about what to make that were made in the heat of the moment. Or for reasons that then changed before the thing was made, or that changed as we were making it, as they should. A twisting path. An emotional rollercoaster. A story that now seems to have been told mostly in retrospect." Writing the book and doing the website definitely gave me more clarity and insight. But such clarities and insights only raise more and more difficult questions. What I've been wondering so much about lately is: how to be an artist for a really long time? Certainly no one gave me any advice about how to do so when I was starting out. And I wonder what advice I might give to others now that I've been writing books and making performances for thirty-five years.

I feel there is a kind of irony in my life in that I spend most of my time doing PME-ART, and yet what I'm mostly known for are my novels. (Also, I have two more novels that are finished but not yet out, the first of which is forthcoming in Autumn 2024, but that's another story.) The novels reach so many more people then the performances. The performances are so ephemeral. Sometimes I find myself wondering if any of it actually happened. But then I realize that it did.

PME-ART: a mix of non-dance, non-theatre and non-performance.


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Seven Tumblr posts that have gone viral.

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I think so far - more or less - I've had seven Tumblr posts that have gone viral:

This tweet that begins: "Gaza has gas. Sudan has gold. Congo has cobalt. Haiti has limestone. Afghanistan has copper. West Papua has crude oil..."

The classic cartoon Can I have a grant to finish my art?

This Paul Williams quote about being very careful about what you label a failure in your life.

This Mikkel Krause Frantzen quote that begins "Capitalism, in other words, inflicts a double injury on depressed people."

This Alfie Kohn quote that begins "When we set children against one another in contests - from spelling bees to awards assemblies to science “fairs” (that are really contests), from dodge ball to honour rolls to prizes for the best painting or the most books read - we teach them to confuse excellence with winning..."

This Wim Wenders quote about how "Every film is political."

And a Steven Cottingham artwork entitled Can You Come Over, Can I See You Tonight.




(I joined Tumblr in 2012 and since then have posted 13,569 times. As previously mentioned, I'm rather addicted to social media. And I often wonder what made these five posts go viral when so many of the other ones did not. Some things really connect with people in ways that, for me, often seem almost random. Something about the magic of the internet, the way things on Tumblr can snowball, more reblogs leading to more reblogs. Some aspect of the phenomena always peaks my interest. The way I can never really guess which particular post will do that particular thing. The way it always catches me by surprise.)


(Also, I can't believe I just publicly admitted I've posted on Tumblr 13,569 times. The addict has a need to confess. )



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Some favourite things from my 2022

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[So it seems like I now do this list more or less every year. I really do love lists. As with previous years, this is in no particular order and many of these things didn't come out during the previous year. As well, there would normally be some performances and exhibitions on the list, but since the pandemic I'm still not seeing very many of either and therefore felt unsure which ones to include.]


Music
JPEGMAFIA – LP!
NNAMDÏ – BRAT
Cate Le Bon – Pompeii
Chelsea Carmichael – The River Doesn’t Like Strangers
Jimetta Rose & The Voices of Creation - HOW GOOD IT IS
Open Mike Eagle – Anime, Trauma and Divorce
Bron Area – The Trees And The Villages
Kalabrese – Let Love Rumpel - Part 1
They Hate Change – Finally, New
caroline – caroline
Gwenno – Tresor

Books
Diego Garcia – Natasha Soobramanien & Luke Williams
Tuesday or September or the End – Hannah Black
My Dead Book – Nate Lippens
Sara: Prison Memoir of a Kurdish Revolutionary – Sakine Cansız
The Ministry for the Future – Kim Stanley Robinson
Activities of Daily Living – Lisa Hsiao Chen
I Need Music – Anaïs Duplan



Plus:
Some passages from Sara: Prison Memoir of a Kurdish Revolutionary by Sakine Cansız




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