Jacob Wren, Authenticity Is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART

 

My performance work hasbeen a search for authenticity, but I don’t think authenticity is somethingthat exist. A work of art cannot be authentic, it can only feel authentic for certainpeople at certain times. Which is to say that, for me, authenticity is afeeling and about what we feel. In much the same way one might feel sad or feeljoy, one can feel something to be authentic. It is a word that suggestsengagement and connection. If you feel that Beyoncé is authentic and I don’t,this simply means that for you Beyoncé is authentic and for me less so. It doesn’tnecessarily mean anything about Beyoncé. However, what works of art we feel tobe authentic can also tell us a great deal about how we see things, what wevalue, and can at times also potentially change how we see and feel about theworld that surrounds us.

I’mbehind on everything, but finally working my way through writer and “maker ofeccentric performances” Jacob Wren’s Authenticity Is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART (Toronto ON: Book*hug Press, 2018), composed as a combination of criticism,first-person reportage and archive, surrounding the first two decades of hisparticipation in PME-ART, the collaborative interdisciplinary collective hehelped found in Montreal. Moving from storytelling, lingering doubt, alternate voicesand blistering self-critique, he writes of a growing disillusionment after adecade of working in Toronto, prompting him to head into Montreal, and startingthe beginnings of a sequence of connections, collaborations, conversations and conflictsthat opened up a wealth of writing, performance and possibility for both himand his work. “I have always been interested in what it means to stand in frontof a room full of people, often strangers, who are watching you, and to do sowith as little armouring as possible, not hiding the fact that the situation ispotentially unnerving or even nerve-racking, being as vulnerable as possiblewithout turning vulnerability into any kind of drama or crutch. I often saythat I personally find performing to be humiliating, and do my best, whileperforming, not to conceal this aspect of my experience. I often wonder why I havespent the past thirty years of my life obsessively working on this particular questionand practice. Perhaps it is only because it is a kind of impossibleundertaking, always leaving me artistically destabilized and therefore alwaysleaving me wanting more.”

Ifyou aren’t aware of Jacob Wren, he’s the author of a mound of award-winning novelsand plays, including Unrehearsed Beauty (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 1998),Families are Formed Through Copulation (Toronto ON: Pedlar Press, 2005),Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed (Pedlar Press, 2010), PolyamorousLove Song (finalist for the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and a Globe andMail best book of 2014; Book*hug Press, 2014); Rich and Poor (finalistfor the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and a Globe and Mail bestbook of 2016; Book*hug Press, 2016) and the new novel, Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim (Book*hug Press, 2024), out any minute now. There’ssomething really fascinating in how Wren composed this recollection, offeringhis take on certain situations, collaborations and performances, as well asallowing a number of his collaborators their own opportunities to offer theirown perspectives, after reading through an early draft of the manuscript. Workingfrom within the very idea of collaboration, Wren doesn’t wish his to be theonly perspective, certainly. If you don’t know where else to begin with thework of Jacob Wren, this might be the perfect point.

I have been makingperformances and literature for almost thirty years and, despite or perhapsbecause of my incessant doubts, I apparently have not quit. I constantly wonderwhat keeps me going. In one sense I feel that when you’re an artist the onlyway to keep going is to believe you have no choice. Believing one has no choiceis also a form of privilege.