For the Sessions series, open-ended events presented on a single evening, Dazibao invites presenters from a range of disciplines, generations and approaches to share their reflections on contemporary image practices and discuss about artistic works.
In 2018, twenty years will have passed since the first PME-ART show, En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize. To celebrate this anniversary, co-artistic director Jacob Wren is writing a book entitled Authenticity is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART, a book described as “a compelling hybrid of history, memoir and performance theory.” For his lecture-performance at Dazibao, Jacob will focus specifically on the process of choosing images for this book, which involves pouring through twenty years of visual documentation. This documentation both represents and misrepresents the ephemeral nature of the collaborative performance work the PME-ART collective has made. Why choose some images over others? What memories and crises does examining these images provoke in Jacob and what can they tell us about the nature of making interdisciplinary performance today? Jacob Wren’s presentation is an artist’s talk turned inside out and a performance about documentation that undoes and undocuments itself as it goes along.