Created and performed by Claudia Fancello, Marie Claire Forté, Nadège Grebmeier Forget, Adam Kinner, Ashlea Watkin and Jacob Wren

On an invitation from Michèle Thériault
A joint production of Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery and PME-ART
Presented in association with Usine C and Festival actOral (Marseille/Montréal)

Sitting around a large table, several performers engage in the ongoing process of re-writing The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. The goal is to make a new co-authored version of the book, to make it their own, to make it more a part of our current world, to take Pessoa’s deep melancholy and transform it into something somehow a little happier or at least energize the text with a certain charge of the present moment.

Fernando Pessoa wrote under a series of heteronyms, of different identities, each with their own distinct backstory and literary style. He wrote in Portuguese, English and to a lesser degree in French. The Book of Disquiet, an assemblage of texts that Pessoa left behind, was published posthumously, and to this day there is an ongoing discussion as to how the material within the book should be organized, what version might be considered final.

Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la mélancolie is a way of turning this highly debated book into a new one, to see how far it will stretch. It is a tribute to the imaginative possibilities of reading as re-writing, how we each have our own version of the books we read, how we mix them with our lives and with the world around us. By making this analogy literal, by performatively enacting this metaphor, we hope to create a space for an ongoing conversation between coincidence, insight and nuance.

This installation/performance occupied all five spaces of the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery.

About The Book of Disquiet by Jacob Wren and PME-ART
Saelan Twerdy, Notes on the Art of Writing—and Rewriting, Novembre 14, 2014, Canadian Art (features)

Image : Christian Bujold
Video documentation : Monique Moumblow

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PME-ART

Through collaborative performance, installation, public process and theoretical and practical research, the work of interdisciplinary group PME-ART is an ongoing process of questioning the world, of finding the courage to say things about the current predicament that are direct and complex.

Performing as themselves, they create actions, conditions and speech executed with a singular intimacy and familiarity. This intimacy reduces the separation between performer and spectator, opening up a space for thinking, tension, reflection and productive confusion. Within this space they present meticulously prepared material in a manner that is open and loose, sliding the situation towards the unexpected, towards a sense of connection with whatever the public brings.

While the style of the work may seem fragmented, and is in many ways a reflection of the fragmented times in which we live, the work also generates a deeply human experience with a foundation in basic yet ephemeral realities: people working together, dealing with the public, simply trying to figure things out.

www.pme-art.ca