L’Authenticité, un sentiment: mode d’emploi

For PME-ART’s twentieth anniversary, Jacob Wren wrote a book titled “Authenticity Is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART.” It is a captivating blend of history, memoir, and performance theory. But something is always missing from books about performance, because performance calls for performance. That’s why we created a companion piece—something like an upside-down artist talk—that reveals why we stubbornly continue to believe in the fragile and essential act of “remaining oneself in a performance situation,” and in the hope that this destabilizing alloy of art and politics can still change the world. The performance documents the reactions of past and present collaborators of PME-ART to Jacob Wren’s narrative. Whether they agree with him or not, their impressions and feelings expose the always complex dynamics of sharing. The bookstore Port de Tête will host a literature table before and after each performance, featuring Jacob Wren’s works as well as a curated selection of books that influenced the writing of “Authenticity Is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART.” An on-site discussion with the artist about the selected works will also take place.