. After lunch we all file into the auditorium for the next presentation. There is a long introduction about how the next person who will take the stage is the reason we’re all here. How when, years ago, he was fired from the university, it created a rupture, an opening through which so much of our current thinking so actively flowed. He’s been abroad all of these years, in some sense in exile, and…
. As of today I have posted exactly 2000 times on Instagram . (Confessions of the extremely online.) You can of course find it here . .
. “The illusion has been shattered that a work of art has a fixed value: its value is dependent on the creative ability of the onlooker, which in turn is stimulated by the suggestion the work of art arouses. Only living art can activate the creative spirit, and only living art is of general significance. For only living art gives expression to the emotions, yearnings, reactions and ambitions which…
. I'm currently serializing my novel-in-progress Failure Finds its Happy End on my Patreon . It is a novel about a person who decides to start an art movement. For the indefinite future all posts will be free content, so there's no reason not to follow (and get a new instalment every month in your inbox.) You can find the second instalment here . .
. " 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…
[I was recently invited by Écotone - Espace d'expérimentation to be part of their Terrains Vacants residency . I was also asked to write a brief summary of my experience, as follows.] The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was (during the first moments of my first week: March 23-29, 2026.) I always listen to music when I work – and when I’m not working as well – but I didn’t bring any music. I…
. I don't remember being this impatient when I was younger. Does aging make you impatient? Two things on their way to being finished , and yet I still have to wait. The first record by The Air Contains Honey comes out this November. It's called The Air Contains Honey Sings Quotes . You're going to like it, but you'll have to (impatiently) wait until November (on the other hand, first single out in…
. WIELS calls for applications from Canadian artists (Canadian nationals, or those living and working in Canada) for a 6-month residency in Brussels. More info here . .
. “We were trying to make a very public society, but no one paid attention, so it ended up being a secret society.” “In the end we thought maybe our manifesto could be a manifesto of questions.” “There are so many injustices in the world, you could speak out against them twenty-four hours a day for the rest of your life and still not have nearly enough time.” * All three lines are from my…
. “The plants themselves encoded something utopian for me, a vision of how the world ought to be. At the same time I had a disinclination to act so powerful it felt ordained. It wasn’t just laziness; it was a sense of the pointlessness of human effort, that almost every action had some damaging consequence, and that it was better to simply let things be. […] Staying power had come later, in my…
. "And I’ve always had such a difficult, conflicted relationship with performing. All of the things you say are true: I do like the immediacy, connection, and the idea of a public life that are embodied in the act of performance. And, at the same time, I’m disappointed that I haven’t been able to find or create even more immediacy, connection, and public life in art and in performance. There is a…
. Somehow my life has organized itself into one big project per year: 2026: The very first record by The Air Contains Honey 2027: My next novel Desire Without Expectation 2028: The new PME-ART show How Does Change Happen? (All of these projects somehow make me very nervous for very different reasons.) .
. Keep doing the same thing versus Try doing something new . I wrote this down after seeing The Ex play a few nights ago. I had this feeling that they just keep doing the same thing and it just keeps on being good. That for them "doing the same thing" might be the right choice. But I'm not sure. I don't know enough about The Ex enough to know that they keep doing the same thing. And definitely,…
. “Despite the suspension of norms in the mosh pit and the lifting of prohibitions on exercising aggression and violence, moshing was never a free-for-all. Like any social endeavour, there were unwritten rules of conduct. Entering a new millennium ushered in by forest fires, warmongering, and a global pandemic, I repeat to myself the lessons I’ve learned. Grasp the hands of the fallen so they are…
. An update on my attempt to start a Patreon (and the book I'm writing to procrastinate working on the other book that I'm supposed to be finishing.) .
. [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 records were released this year, but this was the year I heard and enjoyed them.] Dijon – Baby Titanic – HAGEN Setting – Setting keiyaA – hooke’s law Nadah El Shazly – Laini Tani Maurice Louca – Barĩy (Fera) برٌِي Chyna Baejing and Boneweso – BAEJING BALLAD mary sue, bloomcycle – Self…
. [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…
. Thinking about how my novel Rich and Poor came out in 2016, which is now ten years ago. (And, thanks to Luigi Mangione, it has even started selling again.) * “I will kill him. It will solve nothing and help no one, but for me at least, it will bring something to an end. The poor must kill the rich, one at a time, at every opportunity. One man kills another and the message is clear, your wealth…
. “Many of our biggest blunders have occurred when trying to keep pace with the industry, when applying pressure that one or many of us can’t bear. Commonly, publishers are portrayed as deadline fiends, hounding willy-nilly artists for their work, and with any extra pressure on any one of the parties, the cycle stutters and heaves. A disability justice lens, and its rhetorical influence on and…
Some passages from Afternoon Hours of a Hermit by Patrick Cottrell : * “Friendship has been a form of poison to me, I thought as I tried to picture my friends, especially my writer friends. I kept trying to picture them, my writer friends from the contemporary literature and adjunct scene in Brooklyn. No, the writer friends I pictured only reminded me of the palpable anxiety and awkwardness I felt…
. I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how I might start an art movement. In general, people seemed to feel starting a new art movement was not possible, if they thought about it at all. It was something that occurred in the past, during the twentieth century and before, and was now no longer viable. When I can’t figure out how to do something in real life, the next best thing is to…
The legendary underground musician Elle Barbara presents ‘One Man Show’ on May 22, 2026 at Montreal’s iconic Theatre Outremont. More than a concert, ‘One Man Show’ is an on-stage exploration of Elle Barbara’s Black Space’s 2025 album ‘Word on the Street,’ in a spectacle created in collaboration with noted choreographer Raja Feather Kelly. Sure to be one of the events of the summer. Purchase…
I've never had one of these before. My new novel Desire Without Expectation - the middle book of what I'm calling my final trilogy - is coming to a bookstore near you in May 2027.
. Occupy set the sage for Bernie and Luigi. Bernie set the stage for Mamdani, who set the stage for waves of DSA candidates hopefully sweeping future politics. Luigi set the stage for warehouse fires plus the Molotov aimed at Altman’s house. Actions lead to further actions down the line. (I’m thinking about to what degree it’s possible to push simultaneously from within and from outside the…
. Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART is looking for 4 participants to co-create and perform our next show How Does Change Happen? You can find all the information about the workshop-audition and how to apply both in English et en français .