Authenticity is a Feeling by Jacob Wren

Author:Jacob Wren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookThug
Published: 2018-04-08T14:05:40+00:00

Caroline Dubois, Claudia Fancello, and Jacob Wren in HOSPITALITY 3: Individualism Was A Mistake at Usine C in Montreal. Photo: David Jacques

The other aspect of my original idea was that artists had a lot to answer for in terms of our culture’s overemphasis on the individual. The idea of the solitary artist, pushing alone against the stagnant conventions of society, against the status quo, was in so many ways at the root of the problem. When I write this I am mainly criticizing myself. Even though I have dedicated the bulk of my artistic life toward collaboration, as I get older it becomes increasingly clear to me just how internally divided I am across the chasm of these questions and difficulties. This is probably the deepest, most pernicious contradiction in my ongoing work with PME-ART: that I want to be a famous (or at least semi-famous) individual artist and, at the same time, I also want to work collaboratively in a manner that often teeters on the brink of pure collectivity. This contradiction is very much present in the writing of this book. (And, Caroline says, also very present in her experience of working in collaboration with me.)

Western narratives are so often about one lone hero rather than about a group or collective. The improbable eighties Hollywood action hero, one man endlessly fighting off armies of opponents and in the end prevailing, is a pure cartoon of everything that is wrong with our thinking around how things change and how injustice might actually be defeated over the course of a long struggle. And artists are also so often at the centre of their own ridiculous cartoon, with (in the case of more successful artists) a lot of praise and encouragement to prop up this personal mythology.

(Caroline says that I am quite well known in contemporary theatre in Europe, Canada, and the U.S. and so is PME-ART and, for her, working with me was a way of getting out of Montreal. The fact that I’m known and respected gave her great opportunities and also difficulties, simply because the work was largely perceived as being by me and not so much as being what it actually was: a collaboration between the three of us. She remembers how sometimes our co-authorship of the work was hard for people from festivals, theatres, and events to understand. How we needed to fight and ask for corrections in their programs. She also remembers being in a festival in Germany and her and Claudia both having to wear a lanyard with “Jacob Wren” written on it.)

There are no individual solutions to collective problems. Nonetheless, it is individuals who must come together and figure out what to do. In all of this, there is the unaddressed question of leadership. The anarchist in me genuinely believes rotating leadership is a solution: people take turns taking the lead in the areas of their greatest competence, interest, or desire. Another similar collaborative idea might be: best idea wins. But art is so subjective, and for five different people five different ideas might each seem best.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.