Jean-Luc Godard/Robert Bresson Dialogue

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Jean-Luc Godard: Why were you so committed to sunlight?

Robert Bresson: It’s very simple, really. I have seen too many films where it’s gray or dark outside — which can create a very beautiful effect, of course — but then the next shot suddenly shifts into a sunny room. I’ve always found that unacceptable. But it happens so often when we move between interiors and exteriors because there’s always additional lighting inside, artificial light, and when we go outside this disappears. Which causes a completely false disconnect. Now, you are aware — and surely you’re like me in this respect — that I’m obsessed with the real. Down to the smallest detail. Fake lighting is as treacherous as fake dialogue, fake gestures. Which is where my concern for an equilibrium of light comes from, so that when we enter a house there will be less sunlight than there was outside. Am I being clear?

Jean-Luc Godard: Yes, yes. Very clear.

Robert Bresson: There’s another reason that may be more correct, more profound. You know that I lean toward the side — not intentionally, mind you — of simplification. And let me clarify right away: I believe that simplification is something one must never seek. If you’ve worked hard enough, simplification should arrive of its own accord. But you must not look for simplification, or simplicity, too soon, for that’s what leads to bad painting, bad literature, bad poetry… . So I lean toward simplification — and I barely realize it — but this simplification requires, from the point of view of the photographic shot, a certain force, a certain vigor. If I simplify my plot and at the same time my image fails (because the contours aren’t well enough defined, the contrast isn’t strong enough), I risk falling into mere sequence. I, like you, believe that the camera is a dangerous thing; meaning it’s too easy, too convenient, we have to almost forgive ourselves for it: but we have to know how to use it.

Jean-Luc Godard: Yes, you have to, if I can say it like this, desecrate the technology of the camera, push it to its … But for me, I do that differently as I’m more, let’s say, impulsive. In any case, you can’t take it for what it is. Like the fact that you wanted sunshine so that the shot wouldn’t collapse. You forced it that way, to keep its dignity, its rigor … which three-quarters of the rest don’t do.

Robert Bresson: That’s to say that you have to know exactly what you want in terms of aesthetics, and do what you need to do to realize it. The image you have in your mind, you have to see it in advance, literally see it on the screen (understanding that there will be a distinction, even a total difference between what you see and what you end up with), and this image. You have to make it exactly the way you desire it, the way you see it when you close your eyes.

Jean-Luc Godard: You’ve been called the cineaste of ellipses. I imagine that for people who watch your films with this idea in mind, you’ve outdone yourself with Balthazar. I’ll give you an example: In the scene with the two car accidents (if we can say two, since we see only one of them), do you feel as if you’re creating an ellipsis by showing just the first one? I don’t think you thought of this as withholding a shot, but as placing one shot after another shot. Is this true?

Robert Bresson: Concerning the two skidding cars, I think because we’ve already seen the first, it’s pointless to show the second. I prefer to let people imagine it. If I had made people imagine the first one, then there would have been something lacking. And I like seeing it: I find it pretty, a car spinning around on the road. But after that, I’d rather make the next image out of sound. Any chance I can replace an image with a sound, I do. And I do it more and more.

Jean-Luc Godard: And if you were able to replace all of the images with sounds? I mean … I’m thinking about a kind of inversion of the functions of image and sound. We could have images, sure, but it would be the sound that would be the important element.

Robert Bresson: As far as that goes, it’s true that the ear is much more creative than the eye. The eye is lazy. The ear, on the contrary, is inventive: it’s much more attentive, whereas the eye is content to receive, other than in exceptional cases when it, too, invents, but through fantasy. The ear is, in some sense, far more evocative and profound. The whistle of a train, for example, can call to mind the image of an entire station: sometimes of a precise station you know, sometimes of the atmosphere of a station, or of tracks with a stopped train. The possible evocations are innumerable. What’s good about this, this function of sound, is that it leaves the viewer free. And that’s what we must strive toward: leaving viewers as free as possible. And at the same time, you have to make them learn to love this freedom. You have to make them love the way you render things. That is, show them things in the order and in the way in which you want them seen and felt; make others see those things, by presenting them in the way you see them and feel them yourself; and do all of this while leaving them great liberty, while making them free. Now, sound evokes this freedom in greater measure than does imagery.


…


Robert Bresson: Yes, but I should first tell you how I see myself in relation to what’s being made. Just yesterday someone asked me (it’s a reproach that’s made of me sometimes, perhaps without meaning to be one but nevertheless …): “Why don’t you ever go see films?” And it’s true: I don’t go to see them. It’s because they frighten me. That’s the only reason. Because I sense I’m moving away from them, from contemporary films, more and more each day. And this frightens me because I see that these films are being embraced by the public, and I don’t foresee that happening with my films. So I’m afraid. Afraid to propose something to a public with a sensibility for another thing, a public that will be insensitive to what I’m doing. But also, it’s good for me see a contemporary film from time to time. To see just how big the difference is. So I’m realizing that without meaning to, I’ve distanced myself more and more from a kind of cinema I feel is moving in the wrong direction — that’s settling deeper into music-hall, into filmed theater, that’s losing its interest (not only its interest, but its power) — and heading for catastrophe. It isn’t that the films are too expensive, or that television poses a threat, but simply that that kind of cinema isn’t an art, though it pretends to be one; it’s a false art, trying to express itself using the form of another art. There’s nothing worse or more ineffectual than that kind of art. As for what I’m trying to do myself, with these images and sounds, of course I feel I’m right and they’re wrong. But I also get the sense that I have access to too many means, which I try to pare down, reduce (for what also kills cinema is the profusion of means, the abundance; abundance can never bring anything to art). That moreover, I’m in possession of extraordinary means all my own.

Jean-Luc Godard: You were speaking a moment ago of actors …

Robert Bresson: There’s an unbridgeable gap between an actor — even one who is trying to forget himself, to not control himself — and a person who has no experience being on film, no experience with the theater, a person used as brute material, who doesn’t know what he is and who ends up giving what he never intended to give to anyone. The way you capture emotion is through practicing scales, through playing in the most regular, mechanical way. Not by trying to force emotion, the way a virtuoso does. That’s what I’m trying to say: an actor is a virtuoso. Instead of giving you the exact thing that you can feel, actors force their emotion on top of it, as if to tell you, “Here’s how you should feel things!”

Jean-Luc Godard: It’s as if a painter hired an actor instead of a model. As if he said to himself: instead of using this washerwoman, let’s hire a great actress who will pose much better than this woman. It that sense, I completely understand you.


- from Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983



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we're celebrating our twentieth anniversary again

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As many of you already know, back in 2018 PME-ART celebrated its twentieth anniversary with a book and a performance.

Now, a few years later, it seems we're celebrating our twentieth anniversary again, one last time, to mark Daniel Canty's French translation of the book, now entitled Un sentiment d’authenticité : ma vie avec PME-ART.

To do so, we've invited a few past and present collaborators to read from the book and share a few of their own thoughts on the matter: Martin Bélanger + Marie Claire Forté + Nadège Grebmeier Forget + Kamissa Ma Koïta + Elena Stoodley.

(I'm extremely curious what they'll each have to say but, since I don't really understand French, it's possible I might never know. In order to celebrate the French translation of the book the event will be entirely in French.)

(Also, I promise that after this event we'll stop celebrating our twentieth anniversary.)

Find out more here: Mardi 8 juin, 17 h, Virtuel: Un sentiment d’authenticité : ma vie avec PME-ART






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Four PME-ART events in May/June 2021

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Mercredi 12 mai, 17 h, Virtuel:
Un second sentiment d’authenticité: Authenticity Is a Feeling à l’épreuve de la traduction avec Daniel Canty et Jessie Mill
Conversation conviviale
Regardez-le ici : Première partie, Deuxième partie


Monday, May 17th & Tuesday, May 18th at 5pm:
A User's Guide to Authenticity Is a Feeling
La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines
20 ans de création et d’histoires par Yanik Comeau
Une question de risques par Guylaine Massoutre


Friday, June 4th at 10am:
En réponse à Vulnérables Paradoxes
With the participation of Aisha Sasha John + Burcu Emeç + Dayna Danger + Elena Stoodley + Kama La Mackerel + Kamissa Ma Koïta + Lara Kramer + Mai thi Bach Ngoc Nguyen + Malik Nashad Sharpe + Marilou Craft + Milton Lim + nènè myriam konaté + Po B. K. Lomami + Sonia Hughes
Online at the Facebook page of PME-ART
In collaboration with OFFTA / LA SERRE – arts vivants
Watch the video of the launch
Download: In Response to Vulnerable Paradoxes
Facebook Event

Mardi 8 juin, 17 h, Virtuel:
Un sentiment d’authenticité : ma vie avec PME-ART
Présentation Jessie Mill / Lecture-performance Martin Bélanger + Marie Claire Forté + Nadège Grebmeier Forget + Kamissa Ma Koïta + Elena Stoodley
En collaboration avec Terrains de jeu du FTA
Regardez-le ici : Un sentiment d’authenticité
Facebook Event


Download: In Response to Vulnerbale Paradoxes

Sur commande ici: Un sentiment d'authenticité : ma vie avec PME-ART

Order: Authenticity is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART

Bonus: video of short reading plus my answers two short questions about Authenticity is a Feeling to celebrate the French translation.

And feel free to check out the PME-ART website here.

Image: Daniel Canty

Image: Leontien Paula Allemeersch

Image: Kamissa Ma Koïta

Image: Fabien Marcil

Image: FTA

Cornel West Quote

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I’m going to close with the notion of “utopian interruptions.” What I’m talking about is always tied to failure. It’s no accident that the figures that I invoke – Beckett has an aesthetic for failure, doesn’t he? So does Chekhov. So does Kafka. That wonderful letter that Benjamin writes to Gershom Scholem, July 1938: “You’ll never understand the purity and the beauty of Kafka if you don’t view him as a failure.” Of course, if it wasn’t for Max Brod, we wouldn’t even have the text. Kafka believed he was a failure through and through.

Or, as Beckett says in his last piece of prose fiction Worstwood Ho, “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Like Sheldon Wolin’s fugitive democracy, prophetic religion is a fugitive affair – an empathetic and imaginative power that confronts hegemonic powers always operating. Prophetic religion is a profoundly tragicomic affair.

The dominant forms of religion are well-adjusted to greed and fear and bigotry. Hence well-adjusted to the indifference of the status quo toward poor and working people. Prophetic religion is an individual and collective performative praxis of maladjustment to greed, fear, and bigotry. For prophetic religion the condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. Yet it is always tied to some failure – always. There are moments, like the 1960s in capitalist civilization or the 1980s in communist civilization that prophetic awakening takes place. It doesn’t last too long, because the powers-that-be are not just mighty, but they’re very clever and they dilute and incorporate in very seductive ways – or sometimes they just kill you!

– Cornel West, Prophetic Religion and the Future of Capitalist Civilization



[From the book The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere.]



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POSTPONED*** I Can't Stand the Idea of Putting Words in Someone Else's Mouth

I Can't Stand the Idea of Putting Words in Someone Else's Mouth


POSTPONED*** The roundtable performance I CAN'T STAND THE IDEA OF PUTTING WORDS IN SOMEONE ELSE'S MOUTH between Jacob Wren, Luis Carlos Sotelo Castro, nènè myriam konaté, Rajni Shah and Veronica Mockler that was originally scheduled for today (April 14th) at 4 p.m. has been postponed. A new date for the performance will be announced shortly.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience and hope that you can join us at this later date.


This roster of artists, writers and researchers comes together to consider the practice of 'unscripted' listening and speaking. At once an ontological workout and a probing of recent performance work, the table will tackle questions such as: What is listening from a place of not knowing? What is the relevance of 'unscripted' speech today? For these practitioners, embodying the 'unscripted' is a necessary state of struggle for it resists the productivity of colonial interaction.


Sign up here.

Facebook event.



Poster by Dublin-based graphic designer Conor Lumsden.



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fortune cookie

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I’ve been wondering a lot lately about whether or not - at some point in the not too distant future - I should leave PME-ART. And then the other day I got a fortune cookie which said “Depart not from the path which fate has assigned you.”



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Reverse Portrait

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[This text was originally published in the Kim Waldron book Another Woman _ Another Woman.]



A woman has a portrait in her attic. As she gets older the picture gets younger. Not her image in the picture but the picture itself. There are no other words to explain this. You look at the picture and somehow you know you are looking at a different, a reverse, understanding of time. The wooden frame gets younger, the pigment, the brushstrokes, the idea to even make the work in the first place. Up there in the attic, where almost no one ever goes, the self-portrait carelessly leans against a wall getting younger. Meanwhile the woman continues living her life. Her life is the important part of this story, though it will be difficult to tell the story in a way that makes this at all times clear. The problem is: she knows about the picture in the attic and so do we. It would be an exaggeration to say she thinks about it constantly, but she does think about it, from time to time, more than from time to time. For her, this picture represents something like her “ideals,” it is her ideals that are getting younger, but for us, at least so far, it represents almost nothing. It is a MacGuffin, a red herring, a picture that is getting older, but everything is getting older, every minute of every day. No, already I’ve gotten myself confused. The picture is not getting older, as you already know the picture is actually getting younger. That is the counter-intuitive, the magical, part of this story. The part that makes no sense.

Have I mentioned yet that there are many pictures of the woman, existing out there somewhere in the world, paintings (well, mainly just the one painting in the attic), photographs, drawings, illustrations. She even appears in images she apparently doesn’t appear in, in the background, or just a sliver of her at the edge of the frame. These images have been made for a wide variety of purposes. For example, one is an image that was part of a planned advertising campaign. However, when the company saw the image they vetoed it. They thought of their product, and they thought of the image, and came to the kneejerk conclusion that one would not be able to sell the other. (They did not mean that the product would not be able to sell the image, though that was probably true as well.) This unused advertising image was placed not in an attic but in a filing cabinet. Let me try to get back to the woman’s life, which we still know relatively little about. The part of this story that is most important is the part we so far know least about. As I have already mentioned, the part that is most important is this woman’s life.

One day the woman decides to attempt an experiment. She goes up into the attic with a large format camera and photographs the portrait. It is a woman photographing a portrait of herself, as the portrait is getting younger, to find out if she can photographically capture this magical painted reversal of age. As she does so, she realizes that for much of history portraits were created from paint, then for much of more recent history portraits were captured on photographic film, while now portraits are captured digitally and often called selfies. (We already know the proportional gender of the historical painters in relation to the proportional gender of the historical subjects. This is a contemporary story and things have not changed nearly as much as they should.) She was not a painter, so she asked herself: what would it feel like to paint another persons portrait? Or to paint her own? To consciously or unconsciously mix your own personality with the personality and image of the sitter? Or with the personality and image in the mirror? She had the photographs she took of the painting in the attic developed and had to admit she found the results rather unspectacular. It just looked like a normal painting, there was no evidence that it was getting younger before her (or the cameras) eyes. Just as in a normal photograph of a normal person there is no evidence that they are getting older before our eyes. The process moves too slowly. (Is it worth noting that the eye of a camera is called a lens?)

The woman knows that there are many images of her that exist somewhere out there in the world. She has seen many of them. She has also created many of them. Some of these images have even been sold for a small profit. Once she received an email from someone who owned an image of her, someone she had never met. “You don’t know me,” the email began, “but in some strange way I feel that I know you. Every day, as I drink my morning coffee, I can look to the far end of the dining room where a picture of you hangs on my wall. Maybe you already know this and maybe you don’t, I’m not quite sure.” She did not already know this. The email continued: “I know it is not actually you looking at me, out from that image, across the entire length of the room. It is not you, but I feel somehow judged by that gaze and therefore, in some sense, I feel I am being judged by you. It goes without saying that I am most likely only being judged by my own guilty conscience. You might have already guessed the particular reason for this feeling of being judged. It has to do with wealth, with my ability to purchase your image alongside many other remarkable works of art. The amount of money this work cost is almost nothing to me, pocket change. The reason you might not know that I drink my coffee every morning under the judgmental gaze of your image is because I purchased it on the secondary market. That is why I know, of the amount I paid for it, none of the money went directly to you. In my life, especially as I get older, I feel guilty or regretful about many things, and for some reason this is one of them. Therefore you will find attached, if you choose to accept it, a money order for the exact amount I originally paid for your work. As I said, for me it is nothing, but I suspect for you it will be a substantial sum. I see no reason you should not accept.” She stopped reading, transferred the money order into her account (what the email said was true, for her it was a substantial amount), and shut down her computer. She did not reply to the email, on that day or any other. She could not afford to refuse the money but she certainly did not want to thank him for it. She never heard from him again. In her ideal world, he would assist her financially while continuing to feel guilt. Maybe this guilt would lead him toward other good deeds in the future. She could only hope.

In the attic the painting continues its journey toward youth. (For a moment she wonders: does the painting know it’s getting younger. But how could it know.) Every few months she heads up to the attic for a visit. She sits across from the painting and, on this particular day, she even finds herself talking to it. This conversation is private, just between her and the painting, so I will not recount it here. Of course she does all the talking, the painting does not respond. Or it only responds by getting younger at an imperceptible rate, though at times she almost feels as if she can sense it changing before her eyes. In the attic there are many other objects that have been brought there because they were no longer needed in the rest of the house. I will not list them all. I will focus only on one particular item: a polaroid camera that no longer works. At one time it was a novelty to be able to take a picture and almost instantly see the results. Now this is obviously no longer the case. She picks up the camera and holds it in her hands. It hasn’t worked for a very long time. She examines it from every angle, rotating it calmly from hand to hand. What was once an exciting new thing is now little more than an item of nostalgia. Strangely, as she examines it, it suddenly goes off, a picture smoothly whirring out the front slot. She puts down the camera and holds the picture in front of her, staring at it, watching as it slowly develops. She is not surprised to see that it’s a picture of her. But not her now. Her from fifteen years ago, the last time she remembers using the camera, the last time she remembers it working. It is strange to see her younger self slowly come into focus within the white frame of the polaroid. Just as it is also strange to look up and see a painted version of her younger self, leaning against the wall. And then she has a strange thought: aren’t all images of our younger selves. Every image, no matter how imagined or arranged, is simultaneously a documentary image from some moment in the past. Even a selfie is an image of us a few seconds ago when it was first taken. She does not want to live in the past. She prefers to live in the present, if such a thing can even be said to exist. She leans the still developing polaroid against the painting and heads downstairs back to her normal life.

Dorian Gray had a picture in his attic to tell a story of corruption. This is not a story of corruption. The picture in the woman’s attic is just another picture, just another image, albeit one with certain magical qualities. It depends how you choose to tell the story. I’ve chosen to tell it badly, perhaps because I’ve chosen to tell it using only words.



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Reading Bhanu Kapil (from 2015)

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Reading Bhanu Kapil (from 2015):

Day One

Day Two

Day Three



[In honor of the publication of Bhanu Kapil’s book Ban en Banlieue, published by Nightboat Books, the writers Amina Cain, Douglas A. Martin, Sofia Samatar, Kate Zambreno, and Jenny Zhang gathered together in a conversation to talk about the work of the British-Punjabi writer. The conversation was published in three parts.] 


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Mariame Kaba Quote

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So, maybe I just have a different perspective and I talk to a lot of young organizers - people reach out to me a lot because I’ve been organizing for a long time - I’m always telling them, “Your timeline is not the timeline on which movements occur. Your timeline is incidental. Your timeline is only for yourself to mark your growth and your living.” But that’s a fraction of the living that’s going to be done by the universe and that has already been done by the universe. So, when you understand that you’re really insignificant in the grand scheme of things, you just are, then it’s a freedom, in my opinion, to actually be able to do the work that’s necessary as you see it and to contribute in the ways that you can see fit. So, I think that’s my answer to that.

And self-care is really tricky for me, because I don’t believe in the self in the way that people determine it here in this capitalist society that we live in. I don’t believe in self-care, I believe in collective care, collectivizing our care, and thinking more about how we can help each other. How can we collectivize the care of children so that more people can feel like they can actually have their kids but also live in the world and contribute and participate in various different kinds of ways? How do we do that? How do we collectivize care so that when we’re sick and we’re not feeling ourselves, we’ve got a crew of people that are not just our prayer warriors, but our action warriors who are thinking through with us? Like, I’m not just going to be able to cook this week, and you have a whole bunch of folks there, who are just putting a list together for you and bringing the food every day that week and you’re doing the same for your community, too.

I want that as the focus of how I do things and that really comes from the fact that I grew up the daughter of returned migrants, African-returned migrants. I don’t see the world the way that people do here, I just don’t. I don’t agree with it, I think capitalism is actually continuously alienating us from each other, but also even from ourselves and I just don’t subscribe. And for me, it’s too much with, “Yeah I’m going to go do yoga and then, I’m going to go and do some sit-ups and maybe I’ll like, you know, go to…” You don’t have to go anywhere to care for yourself.

You can just care for yourself and your community in tandem and that can actually be much more healthy for you, by the way. Because all this internalized, internal reflection is not good for people. You have to be able to have… Yes, think about yourself, reflect on your practice, okay, but then you need to test it in the world, you’ve got to be with people. So, that’s important. And I hate people! So, I say that as somebody who actually is really anti-social… I don’t want to socialize in that kind of way but I do want to be social with other folks as it relates to collectivizing care.

- Mariame Kaba



[From the remarkable book We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice. But you can also find the interview here.]



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The VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award

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The VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award


"For a book published in Canada in 2021 that is a hybrid genre, or straddles two or more genres." 


"Creative nonfiction writer, poet, essayist, teacher, manuscript consultant, and editor Betsy Warland’s 14 books are not easily classified or categorized in one genre, yet they have contributed greatly to Canadian literary history and continue to influence emerging authors. Many beloved books do not find a comfortable place on a bookshelf or on a prize list because they are innovative in terms of form, creating/inviting/forcing new ways of being read. Considered uncategorizable, they are overlooked or misread. Named in honour of Betsy Warland, this award celebrates work that disrupts convention about what a book should be, how it should read, what it should sound like, what subject matter is acceptable."



Find out more about it here.



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Some passages from Writing in Space by Lorraine O’Grady

Some passages from Writing in Space, 1973–2019 by Lorraine O’Grady:


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I wanted to set up a situation where the movement back and forth between the experience of the piece and the process of hearing me talk about it might be disorienting, might create the feeling of anxiously watching your feet as you do an unfamiliar dance.


*


Dancers, for instance, who use multi-media are adding new props, but they are still trained bodies moving in space, no matter how outrageously. That is why they offer more audience satisfaction and are more traditionally successful than artists and writers doing performance. And why they are much less interesting.


*


That first week, I went to the Eighth Street Bookstore to look for books on visual art. The first book that attracted me looked like no other I’d seen before. It was a small-format book, wider than it was high, and had a strange red cover totally filled with print. It was Lucy Lippard’s Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object. It was the first art book I ever read, and it totally changed my life. It was an almost artless chronicle catalog of documents and events, and I’m sure Lucy never anticipated that someone would read the book from cover to cover, but I did. By the time I finished that history of the conceptual art movement and all its subgenres – performance art, body art, earth art, and so on – I said to myself, “I can do that, and what’s more, I know I can do it better than most of the people who are doing it.” You see, I was always having those ideas, but I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t know they could be art, and until then, I hadn’t been in a position, in an intellectual milieu to discover it. After that, the struggle became focused: to discover what my art was, where it came from in me.


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One of my personal cognitos, a favorite is: “I dance therefore I think.”


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The one advantage art has over other methods of knowledge, and the reason I engage in it rather than some other activity for which my training and intelligence might be suited, is that, except for the theoretical sciences, it is the primary discipline where an exercise of calculated risk can regularly turn up what you had not been looking for.


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I spent all of the 1980s and the 1990s feeling “God, will it never end? Will they never stop taking up all the room, stop speaking for themselves as though speaking for everyone?” The death of the author? The total construction of subjectivity? Sexual liberation as the prime victory of feminism? For you, perhaps. But for others, there was more.


*


History as the single-minded story of the winners is something premodern and modern cultures have in common. But history has, in reality, always been just one story among many – and not always the most interesting, not always the most useful to present. It was just the story that was needed to survive, to justify power, or the one capable of being understood with the mindset then available. I like to see the lost stories recuperated: stories to use, to amuse.


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Chris Finley Quote

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"One of my dear friends, political organizer Lee Ann Wang, theorizes that we need to prepare for things to go wrong as part of political organizing campaigns. None of us is completely right or good, so why do we act like political organizing is a sacred space where only whole, righteous subjects roam? We are all broken and cannot possibly have read everything, so we will be wrong sometimes. We live in rape culture. None of us gets to be free of this even as we work toward critiquing heteropatriarchy and white supremacy. Living among humans and in the world is a true act of courage because, even with those working toward social justice, institutionalization and violence exist. We are all in the world, which is full of violence. This is not an excuse for bad behavior but an acknowledgement of the fact that we can try our best but still fall short of being perfect subjects. The call-out culture has only made the gap between the good and the wrong deeper and wider. We need to celebrate moments of truth a solidarity too."

– Chris Finley, Building Maroon Intellectual Communities



[From the book Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-Blackness.]


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Two Nicolas Galeazzi Quotes

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We started with an interest in the fundamental differences between exchange and sharing. Exchange demands a distribution of goods between different entities, from where they can be brought into barter. This declaration of ownership is the basic principle of the market economy. Currencies make this bartering easier; abstract it from complicated personal relations and that makes accumulation desirable. It doesn’t matter whether the currency is money, gift or reputation: the accumulative motor is immediately set in motion.

Sharing, instead, is an economy of responsibility. Here it is not the goods that are distributed, but the care-taking procedures – and as ownership is obsolete, a fair distribution has to be organized collectively. This economic form of a shared responsibility for the usage of common good is what is usually understood as the basic principle of the commons.

– Nicolas Galeazzi, Commoning the Arts?


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But this disregards that the historical struggle between the common and the private is obviously the other way round! First and foremost, things are common in the broadest sense, and any human economy has to justify its form of distribution. The claim for private enclosures, and ‘ownership’ is just one possible form of distribution – and we know the consequences of this claim. This applies also to knowledge and creativity. ‘My idea’ is never ‘my idea’, it is always a cultural product built up through a common history on the one side, and a highly renovating contemporary common process of knowledge production on the other.

But the capitalist desire-machine embeds the individual into a system that demands the clear declaration of an individual position, accountable for the effectiveness of its personal individuation. The machine is efficient. It creates desires that an individual can recognize and accept as their own. The individual creates itself along the lines of these desires and becomes exactly what the system needs – a unity that is identifiable and flexible according to the needs of the machine.

– Nicolas Galeazzi, Commoning the Arts?




[From the book Turn Turtle! Reenacting the Institute.]



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"If I told the truth I'd like to live my life again / Walk around my youth in somebody else's skin."

“Favorite three-album run”:
OutKast (ATLiens, Aquemini, Stankonia)
Steely Dan (Royal Scam, Aja, Gaucho)
Momus (Circus Maximus, Poison Boyfriend, Tender Pervert)
Coltrane (My Favorite Things, Africa/Brass, Olé Coltrane)

— Laïka (@laikasez) January 29, 2021

I saw this tweet and it reminded me I've been meaning to write about Momus again. There was something so unlikely about seeing Momus on the same list as OutKast, Steely Dan and John Coltrane. But, also, those first three Momus albums (Circus Maximus, Poison Boyfriend and Tender Pervert), which I listened to obsessively (to an almost insane degree) in my twenties, are probably the reason I'm a lifelong Momus fan. There's always a part of me that believes those three records (along with two other Momus records from the same period: Monsters of Love and The Ultraconformist) basically changed my life.

So, as I've often mentioned over the years, I've been some sort of obsessive Momus fan. But it's really the strangest kind of fandom. The early Momus records meant so much to me. But since then he's made a lot of records and I've found some of them unlistenable, many of them just okay, and a few of them pretty good. (I still sometimes listen to Ocky Milk and Hypnoprism.) During so many of those years I found myself extremely frustrated by his recorded output. I wanted him to be a Maoist intellectual in the music industry, but it seems he wanted to be some sort perplexing cross between the Pet Shop Boys and a Scottish/Japanese version of Serge Gainsbourg. However, also during that time, on almost every record, there were at least one or two songs that did mean something to me. (Well, definitely not on every record. But often enough.) Not sure I could even make a full list, but a few that come to mind: Song in Contravention, Platinum, Christmas on Earth, I Am a Kitten, Giapponese A Roma, Paolo, I Want You, But I Don't Need You, Miles Franklin, Nervous Heartbeat, Datapanik, Gibbous Moon, Precocious Young Miss Calloway, The Thunderclown, Erase. (I especially like the opening lines of Platinum: "If I told the truth I'd like to live my life again / Walk around my youth in somebody else's skin." Which is perhaps the subtext of this entire post.) Over the years this list of individual Momus songs really starts to add up. Many albums I find it hard to listen to all the way through. And many songs I love listening to on repeat. 

And now there is something else. Because, for some reason, 2020 was the year I really started listening to Momus again. Perhaps it began when I read his sort-of-autobiography Niche. (And soon I'll also read the new book about him: Famous for Fifteen People.) And, even though I've listened to every single Momus record hundreds of times each, whether I like them or not, I started to feel his 2018-2020 run was the first time since the beginning he's put out three records in a row that I genuinely like: Pantaloon, Akkordion and Vivid. I'm not sure I would completely recommend these records to someone who is not already a Momus fan. Still, three Momus albums in a row that I rather like. Nothing in the past thirty years of his recorded output suggested to me that this was ever going to happen again. Coming back again to things that gave me solace when I was younger is perhaps also due to the pandemic. And Vivid is a record entirely about the pandemic. Which has also been a solace. (As he sings on the Vivid track September: "And when you think you've reached the end / It’s only the beginning of the end.") (But then I think of the opening lines of his very first single Morality is Vanity: "Seven million people died in the great war / A bout of influenza quadrupled that score / Why pimp to posterity? / Why should they admire us? / All the heroes of Valhalla / Weigh less than a virus.") Even with these records it's mainly only certain songs: Good Time Coming, Glacier, The Poet, Grand Guignol, Inside, Oblivion, September, Empty Paris, Optimism. But the songs I like continue to add up over the years. And the songs I don't like as much seem to fall away. (As Momus himself says in this interview in The Quietus: "There's some complete dross on every album, but when I'm good I'm world class.")

All of this has something to do with getting older. Momus is ten years older than I am. I've always felt that, as an artist of any kind, when you get older the most likely thing to happen is that one's artistic work becomes less good over time. You start to repeat yourself and the repetitions bring diminishing returns. Or you try to go in some completely new direction and end up doing something you're not nearly as good at. I'm constantly trying to figure out how I might avoid this rather pessimistic assumption from becoming a self-fulfilling reality. And there is some way Momus is both repeating himself and going in new directions all at the same time. Everything is familiar but you can also feel him so often pushing in new directions. I'm not sure what other sixty-year-old pop musicians continue to be so inventive. 

I met Momus in 2016 in Tokyo when he covered some of my songs as part of the project Every Song I've Ever Written. So maybe that also softened me to him somewhat. It was so amazing to hear him cover my teenage songs, which were in some ways imitation Momus songs, and to hear him turn them into real Momus songs. And then the other day I clicked on his new track Coco The Clown in which he sings the lines: "I lack what I lack / but I am what I am / so cut me some slack / I'll cut you some back." And I thought: maybe I should cut him some slack. Perhaps cut myself some as well. And, at the same time, I feel that possibly the only way to keep making good work as an artist over the course of an entire lifetime is to be vigilant with oneself. I'm not sure.

So perhaps a good way to end these rather unfinished thoughts might be with a few lines from the Momus song Brexochasm:

Finally fulfilling my potential
Success arrives belatedly
I’m seeing in the end that mere survival
is serenity…




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Un sentiment d'authenticité: ma vie avec PME-ART

UN SENTIMENT D'AUTHENTICITÉ est un livre hybride, sorte de «roman sur PME-ART» qui se situe entre l’autobiographie artistique et le récit, dans lequel Jacob Wren revient sur plus de vingt années de création. Le récit commence lorsque le jeune performeur rencontre Sylvie Lachance et Richard Ducharme, et qu’il déménage de Toronto à Montréal pour concevoir un projet avec eux. C’est alors que s’amorce la passionnante histoire du groupe interdisciplinaire PME-ART.

Dès ses débuts, Wren veut créer un théâtre dédié à l’acte de rester soi-même en situation de performance: cette quête deviendra le fil conducteur de son livre, mais aussi de son art et de sa vie. Avec une intelligence affûtée, qui évite toute complaisance envers lui-même, son milieu et la société, Wren revisite en détail sept des productions les plus marquantes du groupe. Il se dévoile en toute franchise et avoue, entre autres, son incapacité à apprendre le français alors qu’il est codirecteur artistique d’une troupe bilingue. Il aborde aussi les avantages et les difficultés des collaborations intensives, les paradoxes du leadership, les répercussions venant du fait de produire des œuvres inclassables.

Dans une prose parsemée d’anecdotes et d’observations douces-amères, s’approchant de l’oralité, parfois même du stream of consciousness, l’écrivain compose sa «dramaturgie des idées» et nous mène vers d’habiles moments de chute, tantôt drôles, tantôt émouvants. Jacob Wren signe ici un livre à la fois intime et ambitieux, qui vise à transformer la manière dont la performance peut s’écrire et se pratiquer aujourd’hui.

Traduit de l'anglais par Daniel Canty.

Avec des postfaces de Kathrin Tiedemann et de Daniel Canty et 36 photographies en noir et blanc.

*

Depuis la fin des années 1980, la pratique artistique de JACOB WREN est une combinaison étonnante de performances créées en collaboration, de littérature et d’arts visuels. L’essentiel de son travail en performance a été réalisé à titre de créateur et de codirecteur artistique de PME-ART. Il a collaboré avec des artistes comme Lene Berg, Pieter de Buysser, Tori Kudo et Nadia Ross sur divers projets internationaux. Ses romans ont été publiés en anglais, en français et en norvégien. Il habite à Montréal.

Son traducteur, DANIEL CANTY, est, comme lui, écrivain et artiste. Il a traduit des livres de poésie de Stephanie Bolster, Benoit Jutras, Erin Moure, Michael Ondaatje et Charles Simic et était le traducteur attitré du poète officiel du Parlement du Canada, Fred Wah, de 2011 à 2013.

Éditions Triptyque | Collection Difforme
En librairie le 20 janvier 2021 | 318 pages | 28,95 $
LIVRE: 978-2-89801-116-0 PDF: 978-2-89801-117-7

📚 Sur commande ici: https://www.leslibraires.ca/livres/un-sentiment-d-authenticite-ma-vie-jacob-wren-9782898011160.html
📌 Plus d'infos ici: http://www.groupenotabene.com/publication/un-sentiment-dauthenticité-ma-vie-avec-pme-art

🎥 Réalisation: Cédric Trahan




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A prison abolitionist detective novel.

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I'm thinking of trying to write some sort of detective novel set in a world without prisons. A prison abolitionist detective novel. I have no idea how this might work.



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in some shape or form

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I've been making somewhat steady progress on a new book for about the past year. And I was just about to start a new chapter in which I was planning write (in some shape or form) about the current fascism. (I haven't really written much about fascism since the Bush/Cheney years.) And I felt hesitant, not quite sure how I was going to address it. The writing of the book feels almost entirely paused since, at this particular moment, with the intensity of all the things that are happening, I suddenly feel less sure than ever.



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This feeling that the status quo will go to any lengths to protect itself...

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This feeling that the status quo – and those who most benefit from it – will go to any lengths to protect itself. Of course it will absorb, it will co-opt, it will close ranks, it will blacklist. But also (when necessary) it will kill, it will torture, it will scorch earth, it will annihilate. At the same time, the status quo isn’t fixed, it shifts in response to activism and protest. In absorbing its critics, internal changes can take place in unexpected ways and at every level. Such changes are never as much as we might hope for, but they are often significant. And then there are moments of possibly greater change, moments of crisis when everything might be rearranged. Before it eventually stabilizes into some sort of new status quo.



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Since apparently I do have some sort of double life...

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Since apparently I do have some sort of double life – half of my life spent making collaborative performances, the other half spent writing books – one question I often get asked is how are these two artistic lives similar and how do they differ. There are a couple of different ways of answering this question, and how I think about it has changed a great deal over the years.

I think at first I started writing novels, trying to re-invent myself as a novelist, as a way of trying to escape, or take a break, from my performance-making life. All of our performance work is based on the paradox and vulnerability of “being yourself in a performance situation,” and therefore in my novels you can almost see me actively fleeing from that limitation, doing all the things I would never allow myself to do in a live situation. Most of the things that happen in my books could physically happen in reality but the books are also, more or less clearly, not reality, more in the world of theory, thinking, dreams, parable and fable. So, in this sense, my books were a way of escaping from the overwhelming reality (or feeling of authenticity) that was at the heart of the performance work.

But then, over the years, I started to think of it all in a different way. Both my books and the performances have a fairly intensive quality of structured improvisation. At the very beginning of writing a new book I have some idea what will happen, but most of it is left open, and as I write I try to constantly surprise myself, keep myself on my toes, with the idea that if I’m engaged and surprised the reader will be as well. Most of our performances also have a clear structure in which much is left open, and as we’re performing there are always things, small and large, that have never happened before, that are happening in the moment, and this quality of moving freely through a pre-determined structure, and surprising each other, and surprising ourselves, is always my favourite aspect of the particular ways we engage with the act of live performance.

In some ways, if I were to now speak more specifically about Authenticity is a Feeling, it represents the two separate parts of my “double life” coming together, I often find myself thinking of it as a kind of car crash between the two separate parts of my artistic life, which for the most part, in the past, I’ve kept as distinct as possible. It’s a coming together of things that have never really come together before, and this is intriguing, though I’m still more fully trying to understand why and how and what it means and what the future repercussions might be.


- From the interview Stranger than Fiction: In Conversation with Jacob Wren



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Some sentences from my past year

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The technology and narrative we call “money” transforms the finite number of things a person can claim to possess into a seemingly infinite number of things and possibilities. In this way it also transforms finite possibilities for injustice into endless possibilities for injustice, which more and more we are realizing will soon reach some catastrophic limit if we let it.


I feel like the algorithms are gently corralling me toward more and more capitalist music.


Over the years I’ve gradually come to the perspective that useful activism is much more about what you’re for and not nearly as much about what you’re against. (But it is still absolutely necessary to clearly name the things you’re fighting against.)


The people who want change don’t have power and the people who have power don’t want change.


Activism isn’t about what’s possible but about what’s impossible. About taking something we’re repeatedly told is impossible and bringing it into reality.


There is one part of me that doesn’t want to write and just wants to be completely aware and painfully alive to everything that’s happening right now. And there’s another part of me that’s losing my mind because I seem unable to write.


When you’re a careerist, everything looks like a career opportunity.


When you see an argument, you don’t view it in isolation. You also look at the source. What they’ve said in the past. Whether or not you trust them. A solid argument from an untrustworthy source can at times be even more suspicious.


To be honest, I write because I want to change the world. But the evidence that I’m succeeding is not very convincing.


Alongside my madness, there also something about me that is almost too sane.


As things continue to get worse, paradoxically, there might be greater opportunities for change, as everywhere people begin to truly feel the severity of the situation and respond accordingly.


I spent my formative years reading about Latin American dictatorships - disappearances, torture, etc. - all perpetrated by individuals trained at the School of the Americas. And every moment of that reading was spent thinking: sooner or later this will all happen here as well.


I’ve always imagined an ongoing game where the purpose is to try to invent an art movement.


Every road and highway ever built was a subsidy to the automotive industry.


I don’t especially like people. I don’t especially dislike them either. I don’t know… people aren’t really my people.


Working on a book and also, every ten minutes, staring off into space wondering if the world will still be here when I finish it, or if it will be in any state that one can actually publish a book.


We are drowning in a very specific form of propaganda called advertising.


the world is ending / the world is unending


Well… I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. But since I’m my own worst enemy I guess it’s all right.


We all have blood on our hands. But definitely not in equal amounts.


I’ve never really understood why there always seems to be so much infighting amongst the left. Or even if it’s really true.


Why are there so many songs on the internet and why do I feel compelled to attempt to listen to every last one?


It’s my nature to be dissatisfied.


As an artist these days, I feel I’ve only got a few arrows left in my quiver. And I’ve got to make every last one count.


Being an artist is often about the feeling that other artists are getting something that you’re not.


I don’t really know what the right strategy is. My mind is the mind of an artist. It’s not really a mind of strategy and tactics. But whatever the strategy, we’ve got to keep pushing things to the left.


The people / divided / will always be derided.


Honesty without cruelty.


The romantic myth of the artist who struggles an entire lifetime only to be met with an astonishing rush of posthumous fame.


So many people are disappointing. But not all of them.


You finish reading a book and immediately pass it along to a friend.


I always feel better when I’m writing. But when I’m not writing it never really works to force it.


Money isn’t real. It’s a fiction, a story. But money can do things that nothing else can do. So in that sense – at the level of power – it has some sort of greater reality.


Today on the radio I heard the host say “what a frustrating time to be alive” and I felt that.


Watching some online performances this past year has made me realize something I already knew. The thing I like most about live performance is the fact that you’re there in person and it’s live.


desire and doubt


I decided to try to read some of the books I already have instead of buying any new books for awhile. And even though many of the books I already have are really brilliant and compelling, for some reason whenever I make this decision it always leaves me slightly depressed.


2020 was really the year I learned the degree to which I’m actually an introvert.


After nine months of greatly reduced work schedule during the pandemic, and an enormous amount of self-reflection, I have come to the conclusion that I have absolutely no idea what I want out of life.


Instead of trying to be more successful, which has never really worked for me, I have decided to actively attempt to become less successful with the hope that this will also backfire.


Selling Out Is Hard To Do (to the tune of Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.)


The sweet spot between finished and unfinished.



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Every two years versus every four years...

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I've been thinking about this a lot the past few weeks. I had been complaining - mostly to myself but also occasionally online - that I was putting out too many books. I published books in 2014, 2016 and 2018. Every two years felt like far too often. (Complaining is never a good idea. Complaining online is even worse. And complaining about complaining, and doing so online - as I'm doing here - must be the very worst of the worst.) I felt I should give myself more time between books to think about them and to reinvent what I was working on. However, now I finished another book at the very beginning of this year, and (somewhat due to the pandemic) I'm still not exactly sure when it will come out or with who. If it had come out now it would have been two years after the last one, exactly what I was telling myself I no longer wanted to do. Most likely, it will come out in 2022, four years after the last one, which is what I was telling myself would be a much preferable schedule: every four years. I'm now working on yet another book, and I'm considering making it longer, and working on it more slowly, in order that it won't be finished until 2026 at the very earliest, to stay on this imagined, ideal every four year schedule. And yet I can't stop worrying about when the book that's already finished will come out. And what people will think about it. How will it be received. Before I was obsessively worrying that I was putting out books too frequently. And now I'm obsessively worrying that the book I've already finished won't come out soon enough. How does one become this neurotic and this not consequent? And does it have anything to do with the exact same impulses that made me a writer in the first place? At any rate, I genuinely feel there's a lesson for me to learn in all of this. As I often say: it's my nature to be dissatisfied. The object of my dissatisfaction seems almost to be beside the point.



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Six quotations on pessimism

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No one ever needs pessimism, in the way that one needs optimism to inspire one to great heights and to pick oneself up, in the way one needs constructive criticism, advice and feedback, inspirational books or a pat on the back. No one needs pessimism, though I like to imagine the idea of a pessimist activism. No one needs pessimism, and yet everyone—without exception—has, at some point in their lives, had to confront pessimism, if not as a philosophy then as a grievance—against one’s self or others, against one’s surroundings or one’s life, against the state of things or the world in general.

[…]

Perhaps this is why the true optimists are the most severe pessimists—they are optimists that have run out of options. They are almost ecstatically inundated by the worst. Such an optimism is the only possible outcome of a prolonged period of suffering, physical or metaphysical, intellectual or spiritual. But does this not also describe all the trials and tribulations of each day—in short, of “life?” It seems that sooner or later we are all doomed to become optimists of this sort (the most depressing of thoughts…)
– Eugene Thacker, Cosmic Pessimism



Pessimists shouldn’t be committed to pessimism. On the contrary, they should always be glad to be surprised when good things occur against the odds. It can thus precisely be pessimism that allows joy. Pessimism is not invested nihilism. It is the considered result of an analysis that suggests that the odds are not good. That what is faced is incomparable difficulty, and unless it is faced in the knowledge of how unlikely triumph will be, there is no chance at all.
– Rosie Warren, Some Last Words on Pessimism



Pessimism is essentially a religious disease. In the form of it to which you are most liable, it consists in nothing but a religious demand to which there comes no normal religious reply.
– William James



Pessimism is an inner love for life. The pessimist is one who cannot enjoy the joys of life and is very conscious that he has the passion of the unsatisfied and of the unsatisfiable.
– Kiki Dimoula



it’s too late for pessimism and despair, they’re too popular
– Chris Cutler (in 1975)



I’m not a pessimist. I’m sad.
– Fernando Pessoa



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2020-2030 (There's something I like about it being a calendar decade.)

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Last night I was lying awake. I couldn't sleep. And I realized something that might be kind of stupid but felt like a revelation to me in the moment. I'm conceiving the book I'm currently writing - the telepathic kittens book - as the middle book in a trilogy. And I realized that if everything goes as planned the trilogy will take me approximately ten years to write and publish: 2020-2030. (There's something I like about it being a calendar decade.) And that each book in the trilogy might have been called Desire Without Expectation. I was originally thinking that Dry Your Tears To Perfect Your Aim might be called Desire Without Expectation but then changed my mind (it's now the title of the first chapter.) And then Amateur Kittens Dreaming Solar Energy was also - for a while - going to be called Desire Without Expectation, but I again changed my mind. And now I'm thinking of calling the third book in the trilogy Desire Without Expectation, but of course might also change my mind. (Third time's a charm.) And each book of the trilogy is about some kind of utopia. The question of can we imagine something better, what would it be, and what does it mean to try. Of course I might die before I finish, or not finish for some other reason, and that would be another kind of utopia.



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Some favourite things from my 2020

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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 list is in no particular order and many of these things didn't come out during the previous year. Normally there would be at least a few performances, but it seems I didn't really get to see any performances this year. What a strange thing that is.]


Music
Count Ossie & The Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari – Grounation
Damon Locks/Black Monument Ensemble – Where Future Unfolds
Mourning [A] BLKstar – The Cycle
Yves Tumor – Heaven to a Tortured Mind
Locate S,1 – Personalia
Thanya Iyer – KIND
US Girls – Heavy Light
Ben Reed – Station Masters
Nappy Nina - Dumb Doubt
Sandro Perri – Soft Landing
Destroyer - Have We Met
이날치 LEENALCHI - Sugungga
Stuart Moxham & Louis Philippe – The Devil Laughs
Carrie Cleveland – Looking Up: The Complete Works
NSRD – The Workshop For The Restoration Of Unfelt Feelings
Jody Glenham - Mood Rock
Vritra Burd – Wilma
Farai – Rebirth


Books
Beyond Survival – Edited by Ejeris Dixon & Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet – Edited by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan & Nils Bubandt
I Hotel – Karen Tei Yamashita
Dominoes at the Crossroads – Kaie Kellough
M Archive – Alexis Pauline Gumbs
The Employees – Olga Ravn
Indelicacy – Amina Cain
Pew – Catherine Lacey
Trust Exercise – Susan Choi
You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. – Sheung-King
Tender – Sofia Samatar
The Salt Roads – Nalo Hopkinson
Ferguson Interview Project – Ama Birch
The Lonely Letters – Ashon T. Crawley
Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara
We're On: A June Jordan Reader
Theory of Bastards – Audrey Schulman
Listening for Jupiter - Pierre-Luc Landry (Translated by Arielle Aaronson and Madeleine Stratford)


Stories and Poems read online
In the Beginning, Sometimes I Left Messages in the Street – Lisa Chen
Stranger Kinships – Fathima Cader
Three Finals – Orit Gat
53 Acts of Living – Canisia Lubrin
Heal Her – Ariana Reines


Film and Video:
Auxiliary Mirrors – Sanaz Sohrabi
Vases communicants – Edith Brunette & François Lemieux



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Songs Between Works

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[A edited version of this text appears in the exhibition catalogue for La machine qui enseignait des airs aux oiseaux.]



1.
I am reminded of something I wrote many years ago, that “maybe all works of art are some kind of polyamorous love songs, offerings sent out into the world in order to get everyone to love you. Works of art and literature are not directed towards one person but towards many. Songs in the sense of birdsong, messages thrown out into the world.” I’m not sure I still agree with this sentiment.


2.
There’s that lyric in the old Jane’s Addiction song that I misremember as:

I’ve never been in love / I don't know what it is / I only knows if someone wants me

Except in my version I think I might change it to:

I’ve never been in love / I don't know what it is / don’t even know if someone wants me

And I wonder if this is also something about making art. To make something you don’t know if anyone will want. And even after you’ve made it you might still not know. But these things, these makings, can sing to each other. Since artworks are in dialog with the viewer, and they may or may not be in dialog with history, but they are definitely also in dialog with each other. Such conversations are both seen and unseen, forming and reforming in space, over time, and in memory.


3.
I once read that solo exhibitions hewed too closely to the logic of the market and therefore only in a group exhibition does art have the potential to think against capital. I don’t know if I agree with this argument but, at the time, it certainly provoked me. Can one framework really be said to be more commercial or subversive than another regardless of the works within it?


4.
I have not yet seen La machine qui enseignait des airs aux oiseaux and therefore I am definitely not writing about it. Perhaps I am writing parallel to it. Or perhaps only parallel to my own thoughts and assumptions about art and the world. I know there is still something I love about art but often don’t know exactly what it is. It is something about love, about song, about sending something out into the unknown where it may or may not connect with a viewer or with other works. Where it may or may not become political or be seen as such. Where something might happen, but you have to have faith because there are no guarantees and it is not even completely clear just exactly what you must have faith in.

It is of course anthropomorphic to speak of birdsong as I first did. The birds clearly know what they are doing when they sing their songs: who the songs are for, who they are trying to attract. But even though the songs are not for us (unless you are a bird of the same species currently reading this), we have listened to them, and given them meaning, since the beginning of time. So I do sometimes like to think of art in the same way, beyond the artists intentions, artworks speaking to each other, singing to each other, clear across so many rooms. They don’t even know when someone wants them. But also they do.



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Douglas A. Martin Quote

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We will go on from here, in this essayistic work, of which Acker’s fantastic, crudely philosophical letters are only one part of what will be revealed, to arrive at an injunction to “Define to love.” She underscores in her original. Acker begins to do this by exploiting, and upsetting, comfortable rhetorical models of logic. For example, after the opposition “love of knowledge” versus “love of sex” is established to mirror – Acker’s word – the mind : body opposition, Acker decides such a separation is resolved by the logical progression of her next sentence, that: The lovers of knowledge and the lovers of sex both love cats. Other oppositions, and their resolutions through third terms, follow. Acker does what she says she will do here: “Define to love by increasing complexity.”

– Douglas A. Martin, Acker



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Three Trilogies

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Unrehearsed Beauty (1998)
Families Are Formed Through Copulation (2007)
Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed (2010)

Polyamorous Love Song (2014)
Rich and Poor (2016)
Authenticity Is A Feeling (2018)

Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim (2024)
Desire Without Expectation (2027)
Faithful Unbeliever (2030)


*


In my current in-progress trilogy (which I also seem to be calling my final trilogy): Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim (2024), Desire Without Expectation (2027) and Faithful Unbeliever (2030), all three books are based loosely around questions concerning the desire for utopia.

All of the published books have been, or are in the process of being, translated into French by Le Quartanier and Éditions Triptyque.

And if you're feeling extra-generous and want to help me continue writing books, you can find my Patreon here.



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Michael Eddy Quote

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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



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Karen Tei Yamashita Quote

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By now we understood the joke about the Red Block on Kearny and swimming around in radical alphabet soup – KDP, IWK, WMS, KSW, IHTA, CPA, CCA, EBS. On the face of it, we were all radical activist revolutionaries, and we were all united to defeat a capitalist-imperialist system of greed. We threw ourselves into the concerted work of myriad social and political projects, and we worked our butts off. Our commitment and our passion were irreproachable. We were in these years full-time revolutionaries, and we only thought about the revolution we were building, the fierce resistance to a system that served the few and propertied and wealthy, a social system that had failed our immigrant parents and grandparents, had denied their human rights because of their class and color. We learned to educate ourselves in a literature and culture of resistance, and finding ourselves gathered together at the very center of our Asian communities, we also began to educate ourselves in the practice of that resistance. And that practice gave us experience and power. We were young and powerful, and we were the future.

Well, that was the face of it, because over time, despite our agreed ideals, we came to hate each other. For some strange reason, once we entered one of those four inviting radical doors of the I-Hotel and gave our lives to any one of the projects within, our lives were transformed. Our transformation from individuals into collectives was precisely the thing that gave us power, but power has many sides to it, especially the power of a group. Feeling power, wielding power, demonstrating power. A group could act as a single fist or as an open handshake. Well, handshakes were not the tenor of our times. Perhaps it could be said that four mighty fists emerged from four doors to confront a common enemy, to fight in concert the foes of the I-Hotel, but we admit that very often the left fists did not follow the right fists, the punches did not follow the hooks and jabs; we could not agree on our tactics and strategies, and outside the safety of our doors, we avoided or passed each other in hostility, rushing off to our separate tactics and strategies.

We could blame this all on Lenin and Mao, the two leaders whose theory and practice had led to real revolutions, to the overturning of old social structures, and we were avid readers and interpreters of their theories and practices. They were our heroes. We thought they had realized our dreams. Thus we may have followed their principles of democratic-centralism, meaning in theory that we should all participate in our arguments but finally follow in the fierce unity of our majority decision. And we also believed that our arguments were necessary to our collective struggle, that each group was pursuing a line of thinking that would eventually be proven or disproven in practice, that at the end of our struggle, we would finally unite in common unity. Our struggles would make us stronger, more powerful. But we were young and inexperienced, and our fighting was very real, our ideas held just under the tender surface of our new skin and flared in our nostrils. We wanted to be right. We wanted to win.

After we had worked together for our beliefs in twenty-four-hour days without rest, bonded ourselves to each other through the inner struggles of self-criticism within our groups, confessed our social sins to our brother- and sisterhoods, and lost our individual selves to our collective purpose, we finally could only be with each other. And we found ourselves fighting about if we should collude with the so-called system and its elected liberal officials, if our struggle should be defined as working with the working class or our oppressed Asian communities, if this or that hotel tenant was an advanced worker, if our loyalties were with the PRC or the USSR, if any of us were reformists, revisionists, or sellouts, if our art and writing must always have political purpose, and we were very sure that depending on our correct analysis of these definitions, we could then make decisions to act that would be ultimately unbeatable. But however we may have accounted for our thinking and our actions in these years, this was how we found and spent our youth.

– Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel



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Six Paul Valéry Quotes

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The path that leads from a confused idea to a clear idea is not made of ideas.



God made everything out of nothing, but the nothing shows through.



The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.



Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs that properly concern them.



Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.



At times I think, and at times I am.



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Some passages from M Archive: After the End of the World by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Some passages from M Archive: After the End of the World by Alexis Pauline Gumbs:



*


it hurt to move. it hurt to breathe. the food decline plateaued because it hurt so much to eat. and we were thick in our clothes for swelling. and when our eyes swole shut we couldn’t see. and then we finally saw. we saw it.

we hadn’t told the truth is so damn long.


*


at some point the work of pretending we weren’t going to die, that our children weren’t going to die, that our deaths and lives weren’t going to be forgotten, became unsustainable. it was hard enough to just breathe and metabolize. to find something to metabolize. to find people to metabolize near. now some people call it the true end of whiteness, when the world could finally operate based on something other than fear of blackness, of being, of death. but at the time all we knew was the story had run out. all the stories. of staying young to cheat death. of thinking young people wouldn’t die. of immortality via “making a difference.” of genetic imprint as stability. of stacking money and etching names on buildings. people used to do those things before. not to mention that they would not mention death and would hide the dying away and strive to protect the eyes of the children who already knew everything.

at some point. all the dead being here anyway and all of us here being obviously doomed, we let go of that particular game. and started breathing. and saw our hands.

we let go.

i felt like i could fly.


*


what we wanted was to want to. not to have to do anything. and the problem was we forgot after all these years of force what wanting was.

want was not getting, nor was it having. wanting was not needing. wanting was not having to have or needing not to need. it was not. and there was a wideness in wanting that didn’t quite fold in on itself. it deepened and rose up and radiated out and touched softly to itself with warm warning.


*


not knowing when made them reckless in their trust and irresponsible in their love attempts.


*


we questioned the end point of evolution when we noticed it wasn’t us.


*


so she happened to remember the time of the surface people who had hated and manipulated depth in their vain attempt to accept death. how they had blown the peaks off of mountains like this to dig out the darkness they couldn’t find in themselves. how they had blasted into the ground threatening all the underneath water to frack out the darkness they couldn’t trust in themselves. the surface people, she inhaled and exhaled, who blew a hole in the sky as big as what they were unwilling to know.


*


that was the challenge. to create oneself anew on a regular basis. it started with every seven years (also called the new cell cycle) and accelerated for the talented. to every three years, every year, every season, every month, every day until the prestige came from re-creating a self unrecognizable (to both your former self and the expectations of others) multiple times in any given day. they said it was towards the evolution of the community. a community that could not depend on previous expectations would have to evolve new needs. their individual shapeshifting was towards less collective dependence on a former world. let the new world meet us faster where we are! the people sometimes said to affirm a particularly brave invention.

they went from mostly not knowing their neighbors to perpetually not knowing themselves. which seemed more useful. and like the rare urban neighbor with the time to watch their transforming neighbors walk in and out their doors differently every day, the social media applications were even more useful for creating narrative out of the random moments of self-documentation offered by the digitally literate.

maybe that’s where they went wrong. the watching. because at some point the point changed from transforming need and evolving skills to performing further and further newness. as if novelty itself was the measure and the outcome and the point again. and eventually it distilled down to the same people looking different every day and going to the same places they always went just to provoke contrast and doing the same things they always did (eventually just the work of looking for and financing new costumes). so the challenge was called off around the time when it got most boring.

it wasn’t worth the use of fossil fuels.



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