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Upcoming:
Pasta Making Fundraiser at Pastificio Etna / September 26, 2026
PME-ART's Relay-Interview Party at Diversité Artistique Montreal (DAM) / October 21, 2026
The Air Contains Honey album launch at Sala Rosa / November 9, 2026
More info comong soon!
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September 14, 2026
September 13, 2026
Some Favourite Non-Fiction Books
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I was staring at my ongoing list of Some Favourite Books, trying to figure out what I like and why, when I started thinking how important non-fiction has been for me over these past few years. And since the above-mentioned list is getting rather long – and everyone knows how much I love lists – I thought I'd edit it down into a shorter version of some favourite non-fiction books:
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments – Saidiya V. Hartman
Worthy of the Event: An Essay – Vivian Blaxell
Touching the Art – Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend – Tracey Thorn
The Long Run – Stacey D’Erasmo
Animal Joy – Nuar Alsadir
Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World – Lisa Wells
Ordinary Notes – Christina Sharpe
What You Have Heard Is True – Carolyn Forché
The Feminism of Uncertainty – Ann Snitow
The Mushroom at the End of the World – Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Outlaw Woman – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Incognegro - Frank B. Wilderson III
Pollution Is Colonialism – Max Liboiron
The Nutmeg’s Curse – Amitav Ghosh
Lee Lozano: Dropout Piece – Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer
This Little Art – Kate Briggs
Bonus:
Some passages from Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Some passages from My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn
Some passages from The Long Run by Stacey D’Erasmo
Some passages from Animal Joy by Nuar Alsadir
Some passages from Believers by Lisa Wells
Some passages from Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe
Some passages from What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché
Some passages from The Feminism of Uncertainty by Ann Snitow
.
I was staring at my ongoing list of Some Favourite Books, trying to figure out what I like and why, when I started thinking how important non-fiction has been for me over these past few years. And since the above-mentioned list is getting rather long – and everyone knows how much I love lists – I thought I'd edit it down into a shorter version of some favourite non-fiction books:
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments – Saidiya V. Hartman
Worthy of the Event: An Essay – Vivian Blaxell
Touching the Art – Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend – Tracey Thorn
The Long Run – Stacey D’Erasmo
Animal Joy – Nuar Alsadir
Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World – Lisa Wells
Ordinary Notes – Christina Sharpe
What You Have Heard Is True – Carolyn Forché
The Feminism of Uncertainty – Ann Snitow
The Mushroom at the End of the World – Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Outlaw Woman – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Incognegro - Frank B. Wilderson III
Pollution Is Colonialism – Max Liboiron
The Nutmeg’s Curse – Amitav Ghosh
Lee Lozano: Dropout Piece – Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer
This Little Art – Kate Briggs
Bonus:
Some passages from Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Some passages from My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn
Some passages from The Long Run by Stacey D’Erasmo
Some passages from Animal Joy by Nuar Alsadir
Some passages from Believers by Lisa Wells
Some passages from Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe
Some passages from What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché
Some passages from The Feminism of Uncertainty by Ann Snitow
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September 12, 2026
Some passages from My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn
Some passages from My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn:
*
“My band the Marine Girls have been described as looking like we’d break your arm before we’d let you break our hearts, and these things sound like compliments, praising women who are no one’s fool. But there’s an implication that demanding equal space and respect makes you the aggressor. These journalists, they are either scared of you, or they are pretending to be. And they shift the blame for this on to you.”
*
“One interviewer says to her that all the Brits know of her culture is ‘lager, Paul Hogan and Australian rules football’, to which Lindy replies, with an accuracy that can only have silenced him where he stood: ‘It’s the same for Australians. We see your soccer violence, Benny Hill and Margaret Thatcher. We think you’re pretty barbaric too.”
*
“As much as I’m drawn to her outrageousness and loudness, I’m drawn to her positivity. She is constantly upbeat, which is also in my nature. We are both full of a curious, almost gauche enthusiasm about the world. We are cheerer-uppers, bounce-backers, irrepressible, determined – me in a quiet way, her in a noisy way.
Within the world of The Go-Betweens she finds Robert and Grant endlessly depressing, describing them in an interview as ‘the most boring and sad people… That’s why they write the most boring and sad songs. They’re moody and sad. That’s our day-to-day existence and it comes out in our songs.’
She understands and appreciates the beauty that also comes out in the songs, but living and working with their introspection and angst is draining, exasperating, she thinks it is very self-indulgent boy behaviour. A woman wouldn’t get away with it. A woman has to try harder socially. Has to placate, keep things running smoothly, not make unnecessary demands. There is no room for her bad moods, which will be called hormonal. Men experience existential despair while women have periods. Lindy and I both take the view that you can be existential some of the time, while also concentrating on having the time of your life.”
*
“I think how central this is to Lindy’s character, to her essence. The hatred of dishonesty. The inability to play along with it. The bewilderment at how others can embrace it so wholeheartedly. Her devotion to the concept of the truth: an almost religious belief in it as the only way of being, and a revulsion at its opposite. This conviction will bring trouble in its wake, and make hefty demands on her life.”
*
“When I see the film, it makes me angry, then frustrated. How shortsighted, I think. Not to have recognized that Lindy was always one of their strongest assets. Which band would you rather go and see? Two Friends? Or Two Wimps and a Witch?
More than anything, I’m puzzled. Puzzled by the focus on the duo, which leaves out all the drama and tension in the tangle of the original trio, leaves out so much of what had been alluring. It’s such a weakness, not to realise one of their great strengths.
The presence of Lindy had elevated them above the ranks of the stereotypical indie-boy-student band, connecting them with new currents in music which were overturning the gender imbalance. She provided a link with the late ’70s feminist UK bands like the Au Pairs, Delta 5 and The Raincoats, a connection with the early ’80s mixed-gender groups, and a look forward to the Riot Grrrl movement of the ’90s.
Underplaying Lindy’s contribution does not just do her a disservice: it is self-defeating. It makes them a less interesting band, saddling them with a dull identity when they had a bright and interesting one. It is their final act of self-sabotage. As Zadie Smith writes, in an essay on the artist Celia Paul, misogyny ‘is a form of distortion, a way of not seeing.’ Leaving a woman out of the story skews the perspective, gives you an alternate version – a more boring one.
Lindy had brought passion to the band, a tension between decorum and licence. Robert and Grant were cool, and she brought heat; they were calm and she brought energy; they were cerebral and she brought physicality. Without her, they were all decorum, all chasteness. She opened them up, picked them apart at the seams.”
.
*
“My band the Marine Girls have been described as looking like we’d break your arm before we’d let you break our hearts, and these things sound like compliments, praising women who are no one’s fool. But there’s an implication that demanding equal space and respect makes you the aggressor. These journalists, they are either scared of you, or they are pretending to be. And they shift the blame for this on to you.”
*
“One interviewer says to her that all the Brits know of her culture is ‘lager, Paul Hogan and Australian rules football’, to which Lindy replies, with an accuracy that can only have silenced him where he stood: ‘It’s the same for Australians. We see your soccer violence, Benny Hill and Margaret Thatcher. We think you’re pretty barbaric too.”
*
“As much as I’m drawn to her outrageousness and loudness, I’m drawn to her positivity. She is constantly upbeat, which is also in my nature. We are both full of a curious, almost gauche enthusiasm about the world. We are cheerer-uppers, bounce-backers, irrepressible, determined – me in a quiet way, her in a noisy way.
Within the world of The Go-Betweens she finds Robert and Grant endlessly depressing, describing them in an interview as ‘the most boring and sad people… That’s why they write the most boring and sad songs. They’re moody and sad. That’s our day-to-day existence and it comes out in our songs.’
She understands and appreciates the beauty that also comes out in the songs, but living and working with their introspection and angst is draining, exasperating, she thinks it is very self-indulgent boy behaviour. A woman wouldn’t get away with it. A woman has to try harder socially. Has to placate, keep things running smoothly, not make unnecessary demands. There is no room for her bad moods, which will be called hormonal. Men experience existential despair while women have periods. Lindy and I both take the view that you can be existential some of the time, while also concentrating on having the time of your life.”
*
“I think how central this is to Lindy’s character, to her essence. The hatred of dishonesty. The inability to play along with it. The bewilderment at how others can embrace it so wholeheartedly. Her devotion to the concept of the truth: an almost religious belief in it as the only way of being, and a revulsion at its opposite. This conviction will bring trouble in its wake, and make hefty demands on her life.”
*
“When I see the film, it makes me angry, then frustrated. How shortsighted, I think. Not to have recognized that Lindy was always one of their strongest assets. Which band would you rather go and see? Two Friends? Or Two Wimps and a Witch?
More than anything, I’m puzzled. Puzzled by the focus on the duo, which leaves out all the drama and tension in the tangle of the original trio, leaves out so much of what had been alluring. It’s such a weakness, not to realise one of their great strengths.
The presence of Lindy had elevated them above the ranks of the stereotypical indie-boy-student band, connecting them with new currents in music which were overturning the gender imbalance. She provided a link with the late ’70s feminist UK bands like the Au Pairs, Delta 5 and The Raincoats, a connection with the early ’80s mixed-gender groups, and a look forward to the Riot Grrrl movement of the ’90s.
Underplaying Lindy’s contribution does not just do her a disservice: it is self-defeating. It makes them a less interesting band, saddling them with a dull identity when they had a bright and interesting one. It is their final act of self-sabotage. As Zadie Smith writes, in an essay on the artist Celia Paul, misogyny ‘is a form of distortion, a way of not seeing.’ Leaving a woman out of the story skews the perspective, gives you an alternate version – a more boring one.
Lindy had brought passion to the band, a tension between decorum and licence. Robert and Grant were cool, and she brought heat; they were calm and she brought energy; they were cerebral and she brought physicality. Without her, they were all decorum, all chasteness. She opened them up, picked them apart at the seams.”
.
September 4, 2026
Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim / Two Year Anniversary
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Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim came out two years ago. Somehow it already feels like it's been out in the world for as long as I can remember. Thanks so much to everyone who read it (or plans to read it.) And everyone who wrote about it. It’s been really sweet to receive so many varied and insightful reactions. You can of course order it here. Next year there will be a new book, which mean I'll probably start posting about that one instead.
Thinking back to the days before Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim was published, I remembered that the first thing I ever posted about it was this cut passage.
Finally, since I realize I neglected to do this before, thanks so much to everyone who posted about it on Instagram:
anotheramyfung
booksaredeadly
Adam Ferris
whatithinkaboutthisbook
tinamayreads
readandbookmarked
valerier6671
graceisbookedandbusy
kelleydoesbooks
lindsay_wincherauk
junctionreads
rhonda__waterfall
niknak.tbr.stack
bob_black_bluewordsme
gardiemmel
.
Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim came out two years ago. Somehow it already feels like it's been out in the world for as long as I can remember. Thanks so much to everyone who read it (or plans to read it.) And everyone who wrote about it. It’s been really sweet to receive so many varied and insightful reactions. You can of course order it here. Next year there will be a new book, which mean I'll probably start posting about that one instead.
Thinking back to the days before Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim was published, I remembered that the first thing I ever posted about it was this cut passage.
Finally, since I realize I neglected to do this before, thanks so much to everyone who posted about it on Instagram:
anotheramyfung
booksaredeadly
Adam Ferris
whatithinkaboutthisbook
tinamayreads
readandbookmarked
valerier6671
graceisbookedandbusy
kelleydoesbooks
lindsay_wincherauk
junctionreads
rhonda__waterfall
niknak.tbr.stack
bob_black_bluewordsme
gardiemmel
.
September 2, 2026
Three passages from Shapes of Native Nonfiction
Three passages from Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers, edited by Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton:
*
“Jamaica Kincaid, in her conversation with The American Reader, tells her interviewer, in response to a question regarding Kincaid’s mixture of humor and anger in her writing: “There all sorts of reasons not to like my writing. But that’s not one of them. Saying something is angry is not a criticism. It’s not valid. It’s not a valid observation in terms of criticism. You can list it as something that’s true. But it’s not critical.” As we say, and others say, on and off the reservation, past and present, fuckin’ A right. Anger has long been, and used to be, my response to the circumstances of my childhood, ethnic demographic, and creative voice. Always more anger than love, though there was for me, or might have been, an obsession with violence—daggers protruding out of my skull, barbed wire wrapped around me body. My every response was anger, often misdirected, but always refocused upon myself. I sought to understand not only my mental and physical trauma but also historical trauma, both of which I still seek to understand. [...] I have not found a definite answer, know no absolute. Rather, I’ve taken the view that my life, my existence is a job; making the continual attentiveness to my partner’s emotions and well-being a priority, not solely for her, but for myself as well. I would never have voiced this in my life previously (though that may be inaccurate): I have learned that is possible to love myself. To say, all right violence, you’ve had your limelight, now it’s time for you to take the backseat and observe for the remainder of the trip. As for anger, it can always take the helm while I watch the passing landscape.”
― Bojan Louis, Nizhoní dóó 'a'ani' dóó até'él'í dóó ayoo'o'oni (Beauty & Memory & Abuse & Love)
*
“When I feel the world is much too heavy or much too light, when I think there’s no way to push through it or that pushing through is as meaningless as not pushing through, I have a visual: a canyon. It’s always midnight and the canyon walls are slate gray with tentacles flailing from the sides. The bottom is covered in bats, engines, spoiled batteries, and broken glass. At first it is easy to take a step down it; there’s always a side that doesn’t seem too steep. But the first step slides into four, and there’s never time to catch my footing and nothing to grab at. From the bottom there is no way up.
When I feel through with things – with the pressure or the nothingness – I think of this canyon and wonder how close to the edge I am. And I take a step back. Then another.”
― Natanya Ann Pulley, The Way of Wounds
*
“In my Indigenous and Dakota translation, polyamorous multiplicity is not only about human relations. It is an ethic that also focuses on multiple relations with place and values the hard work of relating to and translating among different knowledges. In my ways of relating with human, earthly, and conceptual loves, I reject the usual definition of “promiscuity” as random and indiscriminate. In my redefinition, “promiscuous” is to seek abundance through partial connections. It is openness to multiple human loves and/or to deep connection with other-than-humans, with the lands and waters of our hearts and with different knowledge forms and approaches that enable us to flourish as Indigenous peoples.”
― Kim TallBear, Critical Poly 100s
*
*
“Jamaica Kincaid, in her conversation with The American Reader, tells her interviewer, in response to a question regarding Kincaid’s mixture of humor and anger in her writing: “There all sorts of reasons not to like my writing. But that’s not one of them. Saying something is angry is not a criticism. It’s not valid. It’s not a valid observation in terms of criticism. You can list it as something that’s true. But it’s not critical.” As we say, and others say, on and off the reservation, past and present, fuckin’ A right. Anger has long been, and used to be, my response to the circumstances of my childhood, ethnic demographic, and creative voice. Always more anger than love, though there was for me, or might have been, an obsession with violence—daggers protruding out of my skull, barbed wire wrapped around me body. My every response was anger, often misdirected, but always refocused upon myself. I sought to understand not only my mental and physical trauma but also historical trauma, both of which I still seek to understand. [...] I have not found a definite answer, know no absolute. Rather, I’ve taken the view that my life, my existence is a job; making the continual attentiveness to my partner’s emotions and well-being a priority, not solely for her, but for myself as well. I would never have voiced this in my life previously (though that may be inaccurate): I have learned that is possible to love myself. To say, all right violence, you’ve had your limelight, now it’s time for you to take the backseat and observe for the remainder of the trip. As for anger, it can always take the helm while I watch the passing landscape.”
― Bojan Louis, Nizhoní dóó 'a'ani' dóó até'él'í dóó ayoo'o'oni (Beauty & Memory & Abuse & Love)
*
“When I feel the world is much too heavy or much too light, when I think there’s no way to push through it or that pushing through is as meaningless as not pushing through, I have a visual: a canyon. It’s always midnight and the canyon walls are slate gray with tentacles flailing from the sides. The bottom is covered in bats, engines, spoiled batteries, and broken glass. At first it is easy to take a step down it; there’s always a side that doesn’t seem too steep. But the first step slides into four, and there’s never time to catch my footing and nothing to grab at. From the bottom there is no way up.
When I feel through with things – with the pressure or the nothingness – I think of this canyon and wonder how close to the edge I am. And I take a step back. Then another.”
― Natanya Ann Pulley, The Way of Wounds
*
“In my Indigenous and Dakota translation, polyamorous multiplicity is not only about human relations. It is an ethic that also focuses on multiple relations with place and values the hard work of relating to and translating among different knowledges. In my ways of relating with human, earthly, and conceptual loves, I reject the usual definition of “promiscuity” as random and indiscriminate. In my redefinition, “promiscuous” is to seek abundance through partial connections. It is openness to multiple human loves and/or to deep connection with other-than-humans, with the lands and waters of our hearts and with different knowledge forms and approaches that enable us to flourish as Indigenous peoples.”
― Kim TallBear, Critical Poly 100s
*
August 30, 2026
Serializing Failure (Instalment #3)
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“I wasn’t a writer. People said I was a writer but I wasn’t. I knew I wasn’t a writer because I had never published a book, and I didn’t want to publish a book. Books were somehow too meaningless in the current context. But if we managed to create an art movement and the book was merely a byproduct of that larger, more important project, then for some reason I found that okay.”
I'm currently serializing my novel-in-progress Failure Finds its Happy End on my Patreon. It is a novel about a person who decides to start an art movement. The above lines are from the third instalment. For the indefinite future all posts will be free content, so there's no reason not to follow (and get a new instalment every month in your inbox.) You can find the third instalment here.
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“I wasn’t a writer. People said I was a writer but I wasn’t. I knew I wasn’t a writer because I had never published a book, and I didn’t want to publish a book. Books were somehow too meaningless in the current context. But if we managed to create an art movement and the book was merely a byproduct of that larger, more important project, then for some reason I found that okay.”
I'm currently serializing my novel-in-progress Failure Finds its Happy End on my Patreon. It is a novel about a person who decides to start an art movement. The above lines are from the third instalment. For the indefinite future all posts will be free content, so there's no reason not to follow (and get a new instalment every month in your inbox.) You can find the third instalment here.
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August 27, 2026
Pasta Making workshop-fundraiser with PME-ART & Etna Pastificio
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Begin your pasta-making adventure! PME-ART alum and collaborator Claudia Fancello welcomes you to Etna Pastificio for an exceptional workshop-fundraiser alongside Jacob Wren. Sip wine with fellow artists, discuss your favourite art, and end your evening with an excellent introduction to pasta-making and all the pasta you made in-hand. No prior experience needed!
Join us on SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 26TH 2026 from 6 PM - 8:30 PM at 244 rue Jarry E., Montréal
8 spots available - $130 each
Send us an email at info@pme-art.ca to register.
Wine and drinks are available for sale during the course.
Deadline to register: September 25th 2026
Facebook Event
Begin your pasta-making adventure! PME-ART alum and collaborator Claudia Fancello welcomes you to Etna Pastificio for an exceptional workshop-fundraiser alongside Jacob Wren. Sip wine with fellow artists, discuss your favourite art, and end your evening with an excellent introduction to pasta-making and all the pasta you made in-hand. No prior experience needed!
Join us on SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 26TH 2026 from 6 PM - 8:30 PM at 244 rue Jarry E., Montréal
8 spots available - $130 each
Send us an email at info@pme-art.ca to register.
Wine and drinks are available for sale during the course.
Deadline to register: September 25th 2026
Facebook Event
August 25, 2026
Boycotting all U.S. books
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I'm not quite at the point of boycotting all U.S. books, but these days I often consider it, and at the very least feel compelled to celebrate the books I like from so-called Canada: Some Favourite Canadian Books
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I'm not quite at the point of boycotting all U.S. books, but these days I often consider it, and at the very least feel compelled to celebrate the books I like from so-called Canada: Some Favourite Canadian Books
.
July 30, 2026
Michael Eddy on Authenticity is a Feeling
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"Authenticity is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART, by Jacob Wren
Wren's book is a sort of biography of his performance art group PME-ART. His account of their work, whose aim is stripping away theatricality and “being yourself in a performance situation,” is therefore an exercise in nonfiction. But putting something in a performative frame or committing it to the printed word involve a sophisticated understanding of authenticity where irony, fluidity and hallucination are part of the deal (I tend to project confidence into the awkwardness of PME-ART performers, which can make them alienating as opposed to vulnerable). I think Wren agrees with me: “I am rewriting history from the perspective of now, because nonfiction is always also a kind of fiction.”"
- Michael Eddy, Committed to Irony
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"Authenticity is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART, by Jacob Wren
Wren's book is a sort of biography of his performance art group PME-ART. His account of their work, whose aim is stripping away theatricality and “being yourself in a performance situation,” is therefore an exercise in nonfiction. But putting something in a performative frame or committing it to the printed word involve a sophisticated understanding of authenticity where irony, fluidity and hallucination are part of the deal (I tend to project confidence into the awkwardness of PME-ART performers, which can make them alienating as opposed to vulnerable). I think Wren agrees with me: “I am rewriting history from the perspective of now, because nonfiction is always also a kind of fiction.”"
- Michael Eddy, Committed to Irony
.
July 27, 2026
My Terrains Vacants Brief Summary
[I was recently invited by Écotone - Espace d'expérimentation to be part of their Terrains Vacants residency. I was also asked to write a brief summary of my experience, as follows.]
The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was (during the first moments of my first week: March 23-29, 2026.) I always listen to music when I work – and when I’m not working as well – but I didn’t bring any music. I decided to leave my computer at home in order to spend time away from the internet. (As everyone knows, I am much too addicted to the internet.) So… I would spend some time in silence. That seemed like a good enough idea.
In my application I’d proposed I would spend the time trying to come up with an idea for a solo performance. Almost all of my performance work has been made in collaboration with other artists. My motivations to make a solo performance were multiple and questionable. I’ve always found working with other people difficult and might like a break from such difficulties. Funding is increasingly challenging to come by, and less people on stage also means less funds required. But perhaps my main motivation is to make work in which I have the agency and freedom to completely change things in the moment, with no one else relying on me, no one who might be thrown off by any sudden, spontaneous changes.
Sitting there in that empty, very quiet room at the La Cité-des-Hospitalières, I quickly came up with a preliminary idea. I thought of calling it A Personal History of Everything and Everyone. I conceived of it as a kind of “composition in real time.” One version of the idea was built around a table full of objects. Each object would connect to a theme. The performance would consist of me picking up objects at random and speaking about the related theme for each one. I also had a desire to speak about current events, so I wanted there to be enough objects that there would always be one I could connect to any current event on my mind. I had way more ideas for themes than I did for objects. Some of the themes I was interested in speaking about included: Oil, Music, Prize Culture, Failure, Books, Chronic Pain, A World Without Money, Solidarity, Depression, Travel, Friendship, Cooking, Regret, Nature, Animism, Honesty, Repair and Liveness. People familiar with my work might notice that many of these themes are the ones I find myself returning to over and over again.
When I came back for my second week (June 15-21, 2026), I began, conventionally enough, by looking over my notes from the first week, and was fascinated by how I now had almost no interest in any of my ideas from the previous round. Upon further reflection, this seemed to me indicative of a larger pattern within my artistic practice. I have a great deal of difficulty staying interested in any idea for very long. In my normal artistic work-life, some outside factor forces me to commit to one idea over another: there are collaborators on the project who I feel a responsibility to, or we get a grant, or I tell people about the idea and they encourage me to pursue it, or we are invited to perform somewhere. Each of things (and others) forces me to commit to an idea rather than abandoning it. Since I basically believe that any idea can result in good work, in the end I’m not so certain it matters which idea I choose. If I had the idea in the first place it probably means I have at least some interest in doing it. Any idea can result in good work, it just depends what you do with it.
I then switched tactics, focusing on the more fundamental question of whether I genuinely wanted to make a solo performance and, if so, why. My basic feeling was that I did and here are the reasons I came up with:
- Freedom to change things on the fly.
- Freedom to speak about current events.
- Honesty about who I am and what I’m able to do.
- A preference for doing something that’s less good, yet more true to me, versus doing something that’s better but further away from my true abilities.
- Making performances cheaply and quickly.
- I want to be alone.
I still don’t yet have an idea for a specific solo performance I want to do, but if I ever come up with such an idea I will likely do it. I have a feeling it might have something to do with being old, and for that to work I still might have to get a bit older. I consider the idea that when the rest of my beard turns white, I will begin the process.
In my day-to-day life, I already spend a great deal of time alone, consumed by introspective thoughts. In a way, this residency formalized this process. There was definitely something existential about it. I don’t really make art for myself, I make art because I have a desire to convey something to an audience. Paradoxically, I find I am most able to convey something to an audience if I follow, as closely as possible, my own personal artistic desires. I now realize that a large part of the Terrains Vacants residency was about being in a space, over time, without any specific goals. I’ve always been fond of the John Cage quote: “The goal is not to have a goal.” I’ve always felt lost, and this residency allowed me to reconnect with my ongoing feeling of existential lostness. And so it continues.
.
The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was (during the first moments of my first week: March 23-29, 2026.) I always listen to music when I work – and when I’m not working as well – but I didn’t bring any music. I decided to leave my computer at home in order to spend time away from the internet. (As everyone knows, I am much too addicted to the internet.) So… I would spend some time in silence. That seemed like a good enough idea.
In my application I’d proposed I would spend the time trying to come up with an idea for a solo performance. Almost all of my performance work has been made in collaboration with other artists. My motivations to make a solo performance were multiple and questionable. I’ve always found working with other people difficult and might like a break from such difficulties. Funding is increasingly challenging to come by, and less people on stage also means less funds required. But perhaps my main motivation is to make work in which I have the agency and freedom to completely change things in the moment, with no one else relying on me, no one who might be thrown off by any sudden, spontaneous changes.
Sitting there in that empty, very quiet room at the La Cité-des-Hospitalières, I quickly came up with a preliminary idea. I thought of calling it A Personal History of Everything and Everyone. I conceived of it as a kind of “composition in real time.” One version of the idea was built around a table full of objects. Each object would connect to a theme. The performance would consist of me picking up objects at random and speaking about the related theme for each one. I also had a desire to speak about current events, so I wanted there to be enough objects that there would always be one I could connect to any current event on my mind. I had way more ideas for themes than I did for objects. Some of the themes I was interested in speaking about included: Oil, Music, Prize Culture, Failure, Books, Chronic Pain, A World Without Money, Solidarity, Depression, Travel, Friendship, Cooking, Regret, Nature, Animism, Honesty, Repair and Liveness. People familiar with my work might notice that many of these themes are the ones I find myself returning to over and over again.
When I came back for my second week (June 15-21, 2026), I began, conventionally enough, by looking over my notes from the first week, and was fascinated by how I now had almost no interest in any of my ideas from the previous round. Upon further reflection, this seemed to me indicative of a larger pattern within my artistic practice. I have a great deal of difficulty staying interested in any idea for very long. In my normal artistic work-life, some outside factor forces me to commit to one idea over another: there are collaborators on the project who I feel a responsibility to, or we get a grant, or I tell people about the idea and they encourage me to pursue it, or we are invited to perform somewhere. Each of things (and others) forces me to commit to an idea rather than abandoning it. Since I basically believe that any idea can result in good work, in the end I’m not so certain it matters which idea I choose. If I had the idea in the first place it probably means I have at least some interest in doing it. Any idea can result in good work, it just depends what you do with it.
I then switched tactics, focusing on the more fundamental question of whether I genuinely wanted to make a solo performance and, if so, why. My basic feeling was that I did and here are the reasons I came up with:
- Freedom to change things on the fly.
- Freedom to speak about current events.
- Honesty about who I am and what I’m able to do.
- A preference for doing something that’s less good, yet more true to me, versus doing something that’s better but further away from my true abilities.
- Making performances cheaply and quickly.
- I want to be alone.
I still don’t yet have an idea for a specific solo performance I want to do, but if I ever come up with such an idea I will likely do it. I have a feeling it might have something to do with being old, and for that to work I still might have to get a bit older. I consider the idea that when the rest of my beard turns white, I will begin the process.
In my day-to-day life, I already spend a great deal of time alone, consumed by introspective thoughts. In a way, this residency formalized this process. There was definitely something existential about it. I don’t really make art for myself, I make art because I have a desire to convey something to an audience. Paradoxically, I find I am most able to convey something to an audience if I follow, as closely as possible, my own personal artistic desires. I now realize that a large part of the Terrains Vacants residency was about being in a space, over time, without any specific goals. I’ve always been fond of the John Cage quote: “The goal is not to have a goal.” I’ve always felt lost, and this residency allowed me to reconnect with my ongoing feeling of existential lostness. And so it continues.
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July 25, 2026
Does aging make you impatient?
.
I don't remember being this impatient when I was younger. Does aging make you impatient? Two things on their way to being finished, and yet I still have to wait.
The first record by The Air Contains Honey comes out in November. It's called The Air Contains Honey Sings Quotes. You're going to like it, but you'll have to (impatiently) wait.
And then my next novel Desire Without Expectation comes out in May 2027. Here are a few lines:
"We were there to set fire to the oil wells. So, as you can imagine, we had many enemies. Setting fire to oil wells almost sounds to me now like the genre of idea an agent provocateur would actively encourage. My thinking on the topic of what’s to be done has changed a great deal since that time. I now believe we have to build something, and we’re not going to get far tearing anything down before we’ve built something up to replace it. As I said, those were different times. I look back down at the cover of the book. I don’t want to be thinking about the past. I’d prefer to be thinking about the future."
.
I don't remember being this impatient when I was younger. Does aging make you impatient? Two things on their way to being finished, and yet I still have to wait.
The first record by The Air Contains Honey comes out in November. It's called The Air Contains Honey Sings Quotes. You're going to like it, but you'll have to (impatiently) wait.
And then my next novel Desire Without Expectation comes out in May 2027. Here are a few lines:
"We were there to set fire to the oil wells. So, as you can imagine, we had many enemies. Setting fire to oil wells almost sounds to me now like the genre of idea an agent provocateur would actively encourage. My thinking on the topic of what’s to be done has changed a great deal since that time. I now believe we have to build something, and we’re not going to get far tearing anything down before we’ve built something up to replace it. As I said, those were different times. I look back down at the cover of the book. I don’t want to be thinking about the past. I’d prefer to be thinking about the future."
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July 11, 2026
Olivia Laing Quote
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“The plants themselves encoded something utopian for me, a vision of how the world ought to be. At the same time I had a disinclination to act so powerful it felt ordained. It wasn’t just laziness; it was a sense of the pointlessness of human effort, that almost every action had some damaging consequence, and that it was better to simply let things be. […] Staying power had come later, in my thirties; the helpful revelation that there is no mystery to any creative endeavour save for turning up each day and knuckling down to it, hour after tedious or – but this was far rarer – joyful hour. That was when I started making gardens and writing books, the unhappy years of failed dreaming an increasingly unvisited memory.”
— Olivia Laing, The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise
.
“The plants themselves encoded something utopian for me, a vision of how the world ought to be. At the same time I had a disinclination to act so powerful it felt ordained. It wasn’t just laziness; it was a sense of the pointlessness of human effort, that almost every action had some damaging consequence, and that it was better to simply let things be. […] Staying power had come later, in my thirties; the helpful revelation that there is no mystery to any creative endeavour save for turning up each day and knuckling down to it, hour after tedious or – but this was far rarer – joyful hour. That was when I started making gardens and writing books, the unhappy years of failed dreaming an increasingly unvisited memory.”
— Olivia Laing, The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise
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July 9, 2026
"...even more immediacy, connection, and public life in art and in performance."
.
"And I’ve always had such a difficult, conflicted relationship with performing. All of the things you say are true: I do like the immediacy, connection, and the idea of a public life that are embodied in the act of performance. And, at the same time, I’m disappointed that I haven’t been able to find or create even more immediacy, connection, and public life in art and in performance. There is a sense of ongoing failure that makes the real moments of immediacy and connection in performance all that much more precious. I feel that I’ve wasted my life and I also feel that I haven’t. In a way, for me the act of performance is embodied in this sentiment."
- Jacob Wren, from Hospitality Matters: Un entretien avec PME-ART with Sylvie Lachance and Geneviève Robichaud
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"And I’ve always had such a difficult, conflicted relationship with performing. All of the things you say are true: I do like the immediacy, connection, and the idea of a public life that are embodied in the act of performance. And, at the same time, I’m disappointed that I haven’t been able to find or create even more immediacy, connection, and public life in art and in performance. There is a sense of ongoing failure that makes the real moments of immediacy and connection in performance all that much more precious. I feel that I’ve wasted my life and I also feel that I haven’t. In a way, for me the act of performance is embodied in this sentiment."
- Jacob Wren, from Hospitality Matters: Un entretien avec PME-ART with Sylvie Lachance and Geneviève Robichaud
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June 28, 2026
one big project per year
.
Somehow my life has organized itself into one big project per year:
2026: The very first record by The Air Contains Honey
2027: My next novel Desire Without Expectation
2028: The new PME-ART show How Does Change Happen?
(All of these projects somehow make me very nervous for very different reasons.)
.
Somehow my life has organized itself into one big project per year:
2026: The very first record by The Air Contains Honey
2027: My next novel Desire Without Expectation
2028: The new PME-ART show How Does Change Happen?
(All of these projects somehow make me very nervous for very different reasons.)
.
June 27, 2026
Keep doing the same thing versus Try doing something new.
.
Keep doing the same thing versus Try doing something new.
I wrote this down after seeing The Ex play a few nights ago. I had this feeling that they just keep doing the same thing and it just keeps on being good. That for them "doing the same thing" might be the right choice. But I'm not sure. I don't know enough about The Ex enough to know that they keep doing the same thing. And definitely, over the years, they also tried many new things. But I'm always wondering how much my work should change and how. And I'm never sure quite what the best way to think about it is.
.
Keep doing the same thing versus Try doing something new.
I wrote this down after seeing The Ex play a few nights ago. I had this feeling that they just keep doing the same thing and it just keeps on being good. That for them "doing the same thing" might be the right choice. But I'm not sure. I don't know enough about The Ex enough to know that they keep doing the same thing. And definitely, over the years, they also tried many new things. But I'm always wondering how much my work should change and how. And I'm never sure quite what the best way to think about it is.
.
June 24, 2026
Kawai Shen Quote
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“Despite the suspension of norms in the mosh pit and the lifting of prohibitions on exercising aggression and violence, moshing was never a free-for-all. Like any social endeavour, there were unwritten rules of conduct. Entering a new millennium ushered in by forest fires, warmongering, and a global pandemic, I repeat to myself the lessons I’ve learned. Grasp the hands of the fallen so they are not trampled. Do not tolerate those monopolizing space for themselves. There is something honest and necessary in the proximity that pain causes, in the urgency to stay connected to each other. There can be unity in disorder. Seek it out, make it grow.”
― Kawai Shen, Wavering Futures
.
“Despite the suspension of norms in the mosh pit and the lifting of prohibitions on exercising aggression and violence, moshing was never a free-for-all. Like any social endeavour, there were unwritten rules of conduct. Entering a new millennium ushered in by forest fires, warmongering, and a global pandemic, I repeat to myself the lessons I’ve learned. Grasp the hands of the fallen so they are not trampled. Do not tolerate those monopolizing space for themselves. There is something honest and necessary in the proximity that pain causes, in the urgency to stay connected to each other. There can be unity in disorder. Seek it out, make it grow.”
― Kawai Shen, Wavering Futures
.
June 23, 2026
Things haven't gone quite how I planned...
.
An update on my attempt to start a Patreon (and the book I'm writing to procrastinate working on the other book that I'm supposed to be finishing.)
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An update on my attempt to start a Patreon (and the book I'm writing to procrastinate working on the other book that I'm supposed to be finishing.)
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June 17, 2026
Some favourite records of 2026 (so far)
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[I do a list at the end of every year. And sometimes I also do a shorter list in the middle. Not all of these records were released this year, but this was the year I heard and enjoyed them.]
Dijon – Baby
Titanic – HAGEN
Setting – Setting
keiyaA – hooke’s law
Nadah El Shazly – Laini Tani
Maurice Louca – Barĩy (Fera) برٌِي
Chyna Baejing and Boneweso – BAEJING BALLAD
mary sue, bloomcycle – Self Expressions From Selling Reflections On The Internet
.
[I do a list at the end of every year. And sometimes I also do a shorter list in the middle. Not all of these records were released this year, but this was the year I heard and enjoyed them.]
Dijon – Baby
Titanic – HAGEN
Setting – Setting
keiyaA – hooke’s law
Nadah El Shazly – Laini Tani
Maurice Louca – Barĩy (Fera) برٌِي
Chyna Baejing and Boneweso – BAEJING BALLAD
mary sue, bloomcycle – Self Expressions From Selling Reflections On The Internet
.
June 14, 2026
Some favourite books of 2026 (so far)
.
[I do a list at the end of every year. And sometimes I also do a shorter list in the middle. Not all of these books were published this year, but this was the year I read and enjoyed them.]
Sofia Mostaghimi – Desperada
Michael Eddy – Koh-i-Noor
Kawai Shen – Wavering Futures
Patrick Cottrell – Afternoon Hours of a Hermit
Makenna Goodman – Helen of Nowhere
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr – The Most Secret Memory of Men (Translated by Lara Vergnaud)
Mohamed Kheir – Slipping (Translated by Robin Moger)
Giada Scodellaro – Ruins, Child
,
[I do a list at the end of every year. And sometimes I also do a shorter list in the middle. Not all of these books were published this year, but this was the year I read and enjoyed them.]
Sofia Mostaghimi – Desperada
Michael Eddy – Koh-i-Noor
Kawai Shen – Wavering Futures
Patrick Cottrell – Afternoon Hours of a Hermit
Makenna Goodman – Helen of Nowhere
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr – The Most Secret Memory of Men (Translated by Lara Vergnaud)
Mohamed Kheir – Slipping (Translated by Robin Moger)
Giada Scodellaro – Ruins, Child
,
May 28, 2026
Ten years of Rich and Poor
.
Thinking about how my novel Rich and Poor came out in 2016, which is now ten years ago. (And, thanks to Luigi Mangione, it has even started selling again.)
*
“I will kill him. It will solve nothing and help no one, but for me at least, it will bring something to an end. The poor must kill the rich, one at a time, at every opportunity. One man kills another and the message is clear, your wealth is cruel and unnatural. You can put fences, guards and dogs around your home, so you are like a prisoner in your own life, but if you are rich you will live in fear. You will fear your servants. You will look out the window of your limousine and, at every traffic light, wonder if each and every passerby has a gun and bullet with your name on it. It is only that the killing must be completely random. The victims having nothing in common other than their wealth, the killers nothing in common other than their poverty. The message should be clear: if you are rich you can be killed at any time. The police would arrest millions but there would always be another poor man that could suddenly snap. We would only have to kill ten to start, to strike fear in the hearts of every billionaire in the world. And he will be the first. I will see to it.
On a social level, people have to look after each other, but on an ethical level, each of us has to look after ourselves. If you are a billionaire it is because you have done evil in the world. You have exploited and caused untold misery. You have bent laws and governments to your will. I don’t want to shoot him. I want to strangle him with piano wire. I don’t want to escape. I want to be caught and explain my idea to the world. I want to be executed. I now have nothing to lose. We will all be forgotten. But if ten of us manage to kill billionaires those ten will be remembered forever. Our poverty will become history. Wealth is impersonal but we will make it personal again.”
– Jacob Wren, Rich and Poor
.
Thinking about how my novel Rich and Poor came out in 2016, which is now ten years ago. (And, thanks to Luigi Mangione, it has even started selling again.)
*
“I will kill him. It will solve nothing and help no one, but for me at least, it will bring something to an end. The poor must kill the rich, one at a time, at every opportunity. One man kills another and the message is clear, your wealth is cruel and unnatural. You can put fences, guards and dogs around your home, so you are like a prisoner in your own life, but if you are rich you will live in fear. You will fear your servants. You will look out the window of your limousine and, at every traffic light, wonder if each and every passerby has a gun and bullet with your name on it. It is only that the killing must be completely random. The victims having nothing in common other than their wealth, the killers nothing in common other than their poverty. The message should be clear: if you are rich you can be killed at any time. The police would arrest millions but there would always be another poor man that could suddenly snap. We would only have to kill ten to start, to strike fear in the hearts of every billionaire in the world. And he will be the first. I will see to it.
On a social level, people have to look after each other, but on an ethical level, each of us has to look after ourselves. If you are a billionaire it is because you have done evil in the world. You have exploited and caused untold misery. You have bent laws and governments to your will. I don’t want to shoot him. I want to strangle him with piano wire. I don’t want to escape. I want to be caught and explain my idea to the world. I want to be executed. I now have nothing to lose. We will all be forgotten. But if ten of us manage to kill billionaires those ten will be remembered forever. Our poverty will become history. Wealth is impersonal but we will make it personal again.”
– Jacob Wren, Rich and Poor
.
May 24, 2026
Oliver Fugler Quote
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“Many of our biggest blunders have occurred when trying to keep pace with the industry, when applying pressure that one or many of us can’t bear. Commonly, publishers are portrayed as deadline fiends, hounding willy-nilly artists for their work, and with any extra pressure on any one of the parties, the cycle stutters and heaves.
A disability justice lens, and its rhetorical influence on and co-creation with BIPOC and queer and trans communities, would have us all understand that that kind of pressure serves none of us, in the end. We are here, rather, to care about and for each other, and if it takes time and resources and adjustments, that’s not a barrier but rather the conditions that we must lovingly meet in order to live.”
― Oliver Fugler, from the Intro to Sharp Pink Claws: New Writing by Metonymy Press Authors, Vol. 2
[Check out all the amazing books at Metonymy Press.]
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“Many of our biggest blunders have occurred when trying to keep pace with the industry, when applying pressure that one or many of us can’t bear. Commonly, publishers are portrayed as deadline fiends, hounding willy-nilly artists for their work, and with any extra pressure on any one of the parties, the cycle stutters and heaves.
A disability justice lens, and its rhetorical influence on and co-creation with BIPOC and queer and trans communities, would have us all understand that that kind of pressure serves none of us, in the end. We are here, rather, to care about and for each other, and if it takes time and resources and adjustments, that’s not a barrier but rather the conditions that we must lovingly meet in order to live.”
― Oliver Fugler, from the Intro to Sharp Pink Claws: New Writing by Metonymy Press Authors, Vol. 2
[Check out all the amazing books at Metonymy Press.]
.
May 16, 2026
Some passages from Afternoon Hours of a Hermit by Patrick Cottrell
Some passages from Afternoon Hours of a Hermit by Patrick Cottrell:
*
“Friendship has been a form of poison to me, I thought as I tried to picture my friends, especially my writer friends. I kept trying to picture them, my writer friends from the contemporary literature and adjunct scene in Brooklyn. No, the writer friends I pictured only reminded me of the palpable anxiety and awkwardness I felt whenever I interacted with them.”
*
“Perhaps part of the problem was I had surrounded myself with the fiction writers instead of the poets. I had chosen the wrong world to immerse myself in; the poets were nightclub docents of mourning and melancholia and the fiction writers were real estate agents.”
*
“I was ecstatic with joy whenever I had the opportunity to overhear what people said about me as if I weren’t there. Whenever I ran out of things to talk about during my creative writing workshop with the troubled youth, I would, without warning, get up from the conference table and wander out into the hallway, where, if I wasn’t careful, I could spend the rest of the class eavesdropping on my troubled youth, although they hardly ever said my name. I was nothing to them; they preferred to talk about debt, activism, gender, trauma, etc. I was disappointed when I didn’t hear my name come up.”
*
“A few years and nothing to show for all my troubles but the beginning of my psychological thriller, perhaps ten or twelve pages at most, the first ten or twelve pages are the easiest to write, I once said to Thomas Bernhard during office hours, the first ten or twelve pages are effortless, seamless, boundless, effortlessness; it’s the rest of it that’s completely insufferable. It never opens up the way I want it to, I explained to my mother and Aunt Sue. I only wanted to conjure a latticework of light and tranquility, but because of my limitations, I always end up suffocated in a broom closet of despair.”
*
“And some people might find it hard to believe I managed to write a book, a published one, knowing what they know about me, but during my time in graduate school, I learned it’s the most demented and mentally unwell writers who have the easiest time getting their books published, even the most awful, unhinged, stupid, and neurotic person can write and publish a book, then step into a roomful of strangers and talk about it and persuade them to buy it. Almost all my writer friends are suicidal in some way, I reflected, mostly in a soft, ambient way, their suicidal thoughts humming in the background like a refrigerator or a noise-machine, while others are openly suicidal, more suicidal forward.”
*
*
“Friendship has been a form of poison to me, I thought as I tried to picture my friends, especially my writer friends. I kept trying to picture them, my writer friends from the contemporary literature and adjunct scene in Brooklyn. No, the writer friends I pictured only reminded me of the palpable anxiety and awkwardness I felt whenever I interacted with them.”
*
“Perhaps part of the problem was I had surrounded myself with the fiction writers instead of the poets. I had chosen the wrong world to immerse myself in; the poets were nightclub docents of mourning and melancholia and the fiction writers were real estate agents.”
*
“I was ecstatic with joy whenever I had the opportunity to overhear what people said about me as if I weren’t there. Whenever I ran out of things to talk about during my creative writing workshop with the troubled youth, I would, without warning, get up from the conference table and wander out into the hallway, where, if I wasn’t careful, I could spend the rest of the class eavesdropping on my troubled youth, although they hardly ever said my name. I was nothing to them; they preferred to talk about debt, activism, gender, trauma, etc. I was disappointed when I didn’t hear my name come up.”
*
“A few years and nothing to show for all my troubles but the beginning of my psychological thriller, perhaps ten or twelve pages at most, the first ten or twelve pages are the easiest to write, I once said to Thomas Bernhard during office hours, the first ten or twelve pages are effortless, seamless, boundless, effortlessness; it’s the rest of it that’s completely insufferable. It never opens up the way I want it to, I explained to my mother and Aunt Sue. I only wanted to conjure a latticework of light and tranquility, but because of my limitations, I always end up suffocated in a broom closet of despair.”
*
“And some people might find it hard to believe I managed to write a book, a published one, knowing what they know about me, but during my time in graduate school, I learned it’s the most demented and mentally unwell writers who have the easiest time getting their books published, even the most awful, unhinged, stupid, and neurotic person can write and publish a book, then step into a roomful of strangers and talk about it and persuade them to buy it. Almost all my writer friends are suicidal in some way, I reflected, mostly in a soft, ambient way, their suicidal thoughts humming in the background like a refrigerator or a noise-machine, while others are openly suicidal, more suicidal forward.”
*
April 28, 2026
Elle Barbara's ‘One Man Show’ / May 22, 2026
The legendary underground musician Elle Barbara presents ‘One Man Show’ on May 22, 2026 at Montreal’s iconic Theatre Outremont. More than a concert, ‘One Man Show’ is an on-stage exploration of Elle Barbara’s Black Space’s 2025 album ‘Word on the Street,’ in a spectacle created in collaboration with noted choreographer Raja Feather Kelly. Sure to be one of the events of the summer.
Purchase tickets: https://theatreoutremont.tuxedobillet.com/web/elle-barbara
Listen and purchase: Elle Barbara’s Black Space’s 2025 album ‘Word on the Street’
Purchase tickets: https://theatreoutremont.tuxedobillet.com/web/elle-barbara
Listen and purchase: Elle Barbara’s Black Space’s 2025 album ‘Word on the Street’
April 24, 2026
May 2027
I've never had one of these before. My new novel Desire Without Expectation - the middle book of what I'm calling my final trilogy - is coming to a bookstore near you in May 2027.
April 14, 2026
set the stage
.
Occupy set the sage for Bernie and Luigi. Bernie set the stage for Mamdani, who set the stage for waves of DSA candidates hopefully sweeping future politics. Luigi set the stage for warehouse fires plus the Molotov aimed at Altman’s house. Actions lead to further actions down the line. (I’m thinking about to what degree it’s possible to push simultaneously from within and from outside the system.)
.
Occupy set the sage for Bernie and Luigi. Bernie set the stage for Mamdani, who set the stage for waves of DSA candidates hopefully sweeping future politics. Luigi set the stage for warehouse fires plus the Molotov aimed at Altman’s house. Actions lead to further actions down the line. (I’m thinking about to what degree it’s possible to push simultaneously from within and from outside the system.)
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March 13, 2026
PME-ART's How Does Change Happen? Call for Participants
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Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART is looking for 4 participants to co-create and perform our next show How Does Change Happen? You can find all the information about the workshop-audition and how to apply both in English et en français.
Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART is looking for 4 participants to co-create and perform our next show How Does Change Happen? You can find all the information about the workshop-audition and how to apply both in English et en français.
the internet has rotted my brain
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For the past five or six months I haven’t especially liked any of the books I’ve read and, perhaps subconsciously, this has led to a current situation in which I’ve basically stopped reading books. (I'm sure I'll start again soon, but then again not so sure.) Instead I read slop on the internet. What it feels like is the internet has rotted my brain to the degree that I no longer feel like reading books. Yet it also feels like the internet has rotted the brains of all the author’s I’m reading (since I mostly read contemporary writers) to the degree that they’re no longer able to write books I find worth reading. A classic chicken vs egg type problem.
.
For the past five or six months I haven’t especially liked any of the books I’ve read and, perhaps subconsciously, this has led to a current situation in which I’ve basically stopped reading books. (I'm sure I'll start again soon, but then again not so sure.) Instead I read slop on the internet. What it feels like is the internet has rotted my brain to the degree that I no longer feel like reading books. Yet it also feels like the internet has rotted the brains of all the author’s I’m reading (since I mostly read contemporary writers) to the degree that they’re no longer able to write books I find worth reading. A classic chicken vs egg type problem.
.
March 10, 2026
the hubris that glows
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A house of cards. A paper tiger. A palace built on sand. A machine for telling lies that will someday be brought to light. A race to the bottom. A world historical moment. A situation that is entirely volatile. The end of an era. An opening or possibility. A time to be afraid. A time to make the rich afraid. A time when everything starts crashing down. The wisdom that no empire lasts forever. A Goliath absolutely certain David doesn’t stand a chance. The knowledge that hubris leads to a fatal misstep. The hubris that glows with stupidity. The stupidity that is simply another name for malice. A shift in the global balance of power. A wishful thinking that might also become possible. And death after death after death, a new way (and the old way) of seeing the horrors of forever.
.
A house of cards. A paper tiger. A palace built on sand. A machine for telling lies that will someday be brought to light. A race to the bottom. A world historical moment. A situation that is entirely volatile. The end of an era. An opening or possibility. A time to be afraid. A time to make the rich afraid. A time when everything starts crashing down. The wisdom that no empire lasts forever. A Goliath absolutely certain David doesn’t stand a chance. The knowledge that hubris leads to a fatal misstep. The hubris that glows with stupidity. The stupidity that is simply another name for malice. A shift in the global balance of power. A wishful thinking that might also become possible. And death after death after death, a new way (and the old way) of seeing the horrors of forever.
.
February 27, 2026
Xu Shaoyang is coming to Montreal on March 6th!
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Xu Shaoyang is coming to Montreal on March 6th! Don't miss it.
xushaoyang.co.uk / Facebook event
Xu Shaoyang has mastered a beguiling sophisticated-naive style overflowing with humanity and beauty and that's what makes this Chinese musician so special.
He is a collaborator of the rather splendid cult errant pop group Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and like the Japanese collective his songs pick apart conventional ideas of musicality by embracing fragments, happy accidents and the spirit of amateurism.
Over the years he has performed with musicians such as Lee Ranaldo, Ana Da Silva, Tenniscoats, Eric Chenaux, Jens Lekman, Oneida, Tomoko Sauvage.
After years in Canada, Japan, and Scandinavia, Xu currently resides in London, England.
Xu Shaoyang is coming to Montreal on March 6th! Don't miss it.
xushaoyang.co.uk / Facebook event
Xu Shaoyang has mastered a beguiling sophisticated-naive style overflowing with humanity and beauty and that's what makes this Chinese musician so special.
He is a collaborator of the rather splendid cult errant pop group Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and like the Japanese collective his songs pick apart conventional ideas of musicality by embracing fragments, happy accidents and the spirit of amateurism.
Over the years he has performed with musicians such as Lee Ranaldo, Ana Da Silva, Tenniscoats, Eric Chenaux, Jens Lekman, Oneida, Tomoko Sauvage.
After years in Canada, Japan, and Scandinavia, Xu currently resides in London, England.
February 22, 2026
"the problems of the world will not melt away"
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“As we walked in silence, I realized I couldn’t help myself. I was talking to the Popsicle because I literally had no one else to talk to. At home, I might not have had friends, but there was always someone to talk to. What a sick world this is where you talk to the enemy because there’s literally no one else, feeling so depressed by this idea that, to cheer myself up, I start imagining him as an actual popsicle. A big purple dripping popsicle walking alongside me, two wooden popsicle sticks for legs, angling his frame from side to side with every awkward step. A big purple popsicle with a beautiful popsicle wife and two beautiful popsicle children. Then I imagine him melting, that eventually he will melt away to nothing, leaving a long purple sticky trail behind him, like a purple popsicle snail. And it occurs to me this might be what I most want, for the problems of the world to simply melt away. But the problems of the world will not melt away, we must find tools and strategies to push against them, and I wonder, even here, in this hopeless predicament, what such tools and strategies might be, as the imaginary purple popsicle continues to melt into nothingness beside me.”
- Jacob Wren, Dry Your Eyes to Perfect Your Aim
.
“As we walked in silence, I realized I couldn’t help myself. I was talking to the Popsicle because I literally had no one else to talk to. At home, I might not have had friends, but there was always someone to talk to. What a sick world this is where you talk to the enemy because there’s literally no one else, feeling so depressed by this idea that, to cheer myself up, I start imagining him as an actual popsicle. A big purple dripping popsicle walking alongside me, two wooden popsicle sticks for legs, angling his frame from side to side with every awkward step. A big purple popsicle with a beautiful popsicle wife and two beautiful popsicle children. Then I imagine him melting, that eventually he will melt away to nothing, leaving a long purple sticky trail behind him, like a purple popsicle snail. And it occurs to me this might be what I most want, for the problems of the world to simply melt away. But the problems of the world will not melt away, we must find tools and strategies to push against them, and I wonder, even here, in this hopeless predicament, what such tools and strategies might be, as the imaginary purple popsicle continues to melt into nothingness beside me.”
- Jacob Wren, Dry Your Eyes to Perfect Your Aim
.
February 16, 2026
Scotiabank fully divests from Elbit Systems
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Scotiabank fully divests from Elbit Systems.
This divestment does not exonerate Scotiabank, which maintains investments in arms and extractive capital.
Nonetheless, we must celebrate small wins.
You can read more about it here.
.
Scotiabank fully divests from Elbit Systems.
This divestment does not exonerate Scotiabank, which maintains investments in arms and extractive capital.
Nonetheless, we must celebrate small wins.
You can read more about it here.
.
February 4, 2026
Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans un cauchemar at Mois Multi in Quebec City.
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PME-ART are excited to be collaborating with Bureau de l’APA on a new version of our Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans... Concept Touring Kit entitled: Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans un cauchemar, taking place February 10-14, 2026 at Mois Multi in Quebec City.
I am realizing I haven't yet had a chance to write about our Concept Touring Kit, so I'll give it a try now:
Concept Touring (also referred to as “showing without going”) is a way of disseminating work in which the idea, process and project travels but the artists do not. Instead of the artists travelling, local artists recreate the project for their own local context. Concept Touring is a growing international trend that responds to the current ecological crisis, allowing artists to disseminate their work without taking airplanes. It is an environmental initiative to help us lower our carbon footprint and also, in this case, a remarkable opportunity for local artists to experience the magic that is PME-ART.
Very briefly, Adventures can be found anywhere… is a project in which a group of artists sit around a table and rewrite a book of their own choosing, page by page, changing it in significant ways that are chosen beforehand, and then immediately read each page aloud. It is a mischievous hybrid of literature and live performance that goes to places both unexpected and moving. You might have already seen the videos of the two original (non-concept touring) versions:
Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la répétition (2022)
Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la mélancolie (2014)
What makes Adventures can be found anywhere… such a perfect project for Concept Touring is the process of the local artists choosing their own book to rewrite and having the opportunity to rewrite it in their own language.
The Concept Touring Kit version of Adventures can be found anywhere… premiered at the 2024 edition of the Homo Novus festival in Riga, Latvia. The project was recreated by ten local Latvian artists selected through an open call. They chose a new title that was a mix of Latvian and French: Piedzīvojumus var atrast it visā, même dans le courage. These ten local artists together decided to rewrite Milda Palēviča’s diaries (which were originally written in French and then translated into Latvian), the very first Latvian female philosopher who had mostly been forgotten during the Soviet era.
The upcoming version in Quebec City at Le Lieu (where Bureau de l’APA rewrite Kafka's The Trial) will be the second time our Concept Touring Kit is performed. It is our hope that our Concept Touring Kit will continue to travel (without us.) If you are interested in creating your own version of Adventures can be found anywhere… please get in touch.
Facebook event.
Relay-Interview with Jacob Wren at Mois Multi / February 14, 10am-12pm
The original versions of Adventures can be found anywhere… and the Concept Touring Kit itself were created by: Burcu Emeç + Claudia Fancello + Marie Claire Forté + Nadège Grebmeier Forget + Adam Kinner + Catherine Lalonde + Ashlea Watkin + Jacob Wren. Thanks to Michèle Thériault and the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery for commissioning the work.
PME-ART are excited to be collaborating with Bureau de l’APA on a new version of our Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans... Concept Touring Kit entitled: Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans un cauchemar, taking place February 10-14, 2026 at Mois Multi in Quebec City.
I am realizing I haven't yet had a chance to write about our Concept Touring Kit, so I'll give it a try now:
Concept Touring (also referred to as “showing without going”) is a way of disseminating work in which the idea, process and project travels but the artists do not. Instead of the artists travelling, local artists recreate the project for their own local context. Concept Touring is a growing international trend that responds to the current ecological crisis, allowing artists to disseminate their work without taking airplanes. It is an environmental initiative to help us lower our carbon footprint and also, in this case, a remarkable opportunity for local artists to experience the magic that is PME-ART.
Very briefly, Adventures can be found anywhere… is a project in which a group of artists sit around a table and rewrite a book of their own choosing, page by page, changing it in significant ways that are chosen beforehand, and then immediately read each page aloud. It is a mischievous hybrid of literature and live performance that goes to places both unexpected and moving. You might have already seen the videos of the two original (non-concept touring) versions:
Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la répétition (2022)
Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la mélancolie (2014)
What makes Adventures can be found anywhere… such a perfect project for Concept Touring is the process of the local artists choosing their own book to rewrite and having the opportunity to rewrite it in their own language.
The Concept Touring Kit version of Adventures can be found anywhere… premiered at the 2024 edition of the Homo Novus festival in Riga, Latvia. The project was recreated by ten local Latvian artists selected through an open call. They chose a new title that was a mix of Latvian and French: Piedzīvojumus var atrast it visā, même dans le courage. These ten local artists together decided to rewrite Milda Palēviča’s diaries (which were originally written in French and then translated into Latvian), the very first Latvian female philosopher who had mostly been forgotten during the Soviet era.
The upcoming version in Quebec City at Le Lieu (where Bureau de l’APA rewrite Kafka's The Trial) will be the second time our Concept Touring Kit is performed. It is our hope that our Concept Touring Kit will continue to travel (without us.) If you are interested in creating your own version of Adventures can be found anywhere… please get in touch.
Facebook event.
Relay-Interview with Jacob Wren at Mois Multi / February 14, 10am-12pm
The original versions of Adventures can be found anywhere… and the Concept Touring Kit itself were created by: Burcu Emeç + Claudia Fancello + Marie Claire Forté + Nadège Grebmeier Forget + Adam Kinner + Catherine Lalonde + Ashlea Watkin + Jacob Wren. Thanks to Michèle Thériault and the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery for commissioning the work.
January 28, 2026
the most compelling first page
High praise for my book Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim: "This has to be the most compelling first page of a book I've ever read."
Thanks so much for reading.
January 24, 2026
Amy Fusselman Quote
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"The parental gaze returned me to a quote I had read a few years earlier, by British child psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, in his 1971 book Playing and Reality, in a chapter on adolescent development. Although my kids weren’t yet adolescents when I first read it—two of the three of them are now—it has remained one of the most significant things I have read in my parenting life:
“If you do all you can to promote personal growth in your offspring, you will need to be able to deal with startling results. If your children find themselves at all they will not be contented to find anything but the whole of themselves, and that will include the aggression and destructive elements in themselves as well as the elements that can be labelled loving. There will be this long tussle which you will need to survive.”
In all my parental discussions up to that moment—with teachers, principals, pediatricians, and other significant figures in my parenting work—I had never before heard a peep about the desirability of dealing with “startling results” such as these. The parenting canon as I had seen it seemed rife with experts whose sole aim—I am thinking now of the brightly-titled mega-bestseller 1-2-3 Magic—was to keep the parent secure in his/her domain of wizard-y control. That as brilliant a psychoanalyst as Winnicott should have stated that a death-defying “tussle” is an essential aspect of parenting whole children—and serves as a sign that one has parented well rather than poorly—is a concept I have held onto tightly in part because I have heard it expressed so seldom."
- Amy Fusselman, On the Parental Gaze
.
"The parental gaze returned me to a quote I had read a few years earlier, by British child psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, in his 1971 book Playing and Reality, in a chapter on adolescent development. Although my kids weren’t yet adolescents when I first read it—two of the three of them are now—it has remained one of the most significant things I have read in my parenting life:
“If you do all you can to promote personal growth in your offspring, you will need to be able to deal with startling results. If your children find themselves at all they will not be contented to find anything but the whole of themselves, and that will include the aggression and destructive elements in themselves as well as the elements that can be labelled loving. There will be this long tussle which you will need to survive.”
In all my parental discussions up to that moment—with teachers, principals, pediatricians, and other significant figures in my parenting work—I had never before heard a peep about the desirability of dealing with “startling results” such as these. The parenting canon as I had seen it seemed rife with experts whose sole aim—I am thinking now of the brightly-titled mega-bestseller 1-2-3 Magic—was to keep the parent secure in his/her domain of wizard-y control. That as brilliant a psychoanalyst as Winnicott should have stated that a death-defying “tussle” is an essential aspect of parenting whole children—and serves as a sign that one has parented well rather than poorly—is a concept I have held onto tightly in part because I have heard it expressed so seldom."
- Amy Fusselman, On the Parental Gaze
.
January 10, 2026
The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information at Rosendal Teater (Trondheim, Norway)
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PME-ART are soon on our way to Norway to perform The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information at the Rosendal Teater on January 21, 2026. We have now been performing this work for fifteen years and it is always a pleasure to bring it to a new city.
A turntable and a pile of records. For each record we have at least one story at the ready. These stories have come from hearsay, internet research, books, magazines, friends and our personal lives. One after another, we put on the records and tell our stories about them, each story growing out of the last and into the next. The audience can casually have a drink, stay for a while, come and go, exploring the way music – and the stories that surround it – infiltrate our personal and social lives, affecting our ongoing understanding of love, work and how we think society should operate.
Every time we do The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information we tell stories we’ve told before but in very new ways, plus a few stories we’ve never told before to keep us on our toes. Like John Peel famously once said about The Fall: “Always the same, always different.”
The following day (January 22) we invite the public to bring a song of their choice and tell a story about it during the Bring your own Record/Listening Party.
*
Bonus:
Watch at short video of The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information being performed at the Musée d’art contemporain – La Triennale québécoise, 12 octobre 2011.
You can also read A letter about The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information from 2011.
Plus an excerpt from my book Authenticity is a Feeling about The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information featuring anecdotes regarding The Fall, Pavement and Parenthetical Girls.
.
PME-ART are soon on our way to Norway to perform The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information at the Rosendal Teater on January 21, 2026. We have now been performing this work for fifteen years and it is always a pleasure to bring it to a new city.
A turntable and a pile of records. For each record we have at least one story at the ready. These stories have come from hearsay, internet research, books, magazines, friends and our personal lives. One after another, we put on the records and tell our stories about them, each story growing out of the last and into the next. The audience can casually have a drink, stay for a while, come and go, exploring the way music – and the stories that surround it – infiltrate our personal and social lives, affecting our ongoing understanding of love, work and how we think society should operate.
Every time we do The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information we tell stories we’ve told before but in very new ways, plus a few stories we’ve never told before to keep us on our toes. Like John Peel famously once said about The Fall: “Always the same, always different.”
The following day (January 22) we invite the public to bring a song of their choice and tell a story about it during the Bring your own Record/Listening Party.
*
Bonus:
Watch at short video of The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information being performed at the Musée d’art contemporain – La Triennale québécoise, 12 octobre 2011.
You can also read A letter about The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information from 2011.
Plus an excerpt from my book Authenticity is a Feeling about The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information featuring anecdotes regarding The Fall, Pavement and Parenthetical Girls.
.
January 4, 2026
Some Favourite Political Novels
Someone on social media asked for people's favourite political novels (their recommendation was Comrade Papa by GauZ, which I now need to read.) It got me thinking, and I came up with this list (since, as everyone knows, I really do love lists):
Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 – Eman Abdelhadi and M. E. O'Brien
Diego Garcia – Natasha Soobramanien & Luke Williams
American Abductions – Mauro Javier Cárdenas
ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines – Sesshu Foster & Arturo Ernesto Romo
I Hotel – Karen Tei Yamashita
M Archive – Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History – Diana Block
The Unseen – Nanni Balestrini (translated by Liz Heron)
The Vanquished – César Andreu Iglesias (translated by Sidney W. Mintz)
Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow – Michiko Ishimure (translated by Livia Monnet)
American War – Omar El Akkad
.
Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 – Eman Abdelhadi and M. E. O'Brien
Diego Garcia – Natasha Soobramanien & Luke Williams
American Abductions – Mauro Javier Cárdenas
ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines – Sesshu Foster & Arturo Ernesto Romo
I Hotel – Karen Tei Yamashita
M Archive – Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History – Diana Block
The Unseen – Nanni Balestrini (translated by Liz Heron)
The Vanquished – César Andreu Iglesias (translated by Sidney W. Mintz)
Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow – Michiko Ishimure (translated by Livia Monnet)
American War – Omar El Akkad
.
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