Michael Eddy on Authenticity is a Feeling

.



"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




.

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



,

Michael Eddy Quote

.



One could argue, like Maus above, that the antidote to irony is actually authenticity. If the self-reflexivity I called for above meant authentic presence, maybe we could indeed eliminate the risk of artificiality in the vague appropriation? In a performance of Jacob Wren’s recent book Authenticity Is A Feeling, which recounts the history of PME-ART, the performance group he has headed for twenty years, Wren explained that his ultimate goal and what keeps him going is work that strips away the baroque theatricality of most performance art (like scripts, affectations, etc.). It may be odd to finish this essay on an example that seems to eschew the scaled plating of appropriation for some type of biographical vulnerability. But while I found Wren’s performance affecting, I also could not help finding it affected. “In a way this echoed something that had followed us since the beginning of the show: when you are being yourself, when you are trying to bring more of this reality into the performance situation, so many people think that because it is still theatre, taking place onstage everything you’re saying must not be true. Or at least they come expecting fiction, and when it’s so unclear how the things you’re saying match or don’t match this expectation, they can easily become suspicious.” In my suspicions of Wren’s call to “being yourself in a performance situation,” I display the ironic symptoms of so many people. But a few pages later, I get a sense of why I enjoy this suspicion, these symptoms: “I am rewriting history from the perspective of now, because non-fiction is always also a kind of fiction.” Authenticity always also has a kernel of irony, not least when representation is involved. If we hope to find a more productive and just form of appropriation based on authenticity and sincerity, I have a hunch that scenes of self abuse would be necessary to make us feel possessed of our identities; or that dedication to a principle of opacity would firewall errant interpretation; or that it may not be appropriation after all.

- Michael Eddy, Vague Appropriation



.