PME-ART
Every Song I’ve Ever Written
By Jacob Wren
Solo: October 19, 2017, at 18:00
Website: http://www.everysongiveeverwritten.com
Every Song I’ve Ever Written is a project about memory, history, things that may or may not exist, songwriting, the internet and pop culture.
From 1985 to 2004, PME-ART co-artistic director Jacob Wren wrote songs. Lots and lots of songs. At the time hardly anyone heard them, and therefore, in some sense, these songs don’t yet exist. Taken as a whole, Every Song I’ve Ever Written hopes to raise questions about what songs mean on the internet, about what songwriting is actually like today, and also take a sidelong glance back at the recent past.
Arranged in chronological order, like in the Solo performance, these songs form an unintentional portrait of Jacob’s youth, at the same time chronicling one view of recent history.
If you are reading this, we would like you to consider recording your own version of one of these songs, changing it, making it your own, then sending it to us. We will post every version we receive on our website: everysongIveeverwritten.com.
Credits
Concept, songwriting, performances: Jacob Wren
Website Design: Uniform
Website Programming: Bruno Cloutier
Website Recordings: Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (hotel2tango)
Technical Consultant: Mathieu Chartrand
Artistic Coordination & Administration: Sylvie Lachance & Richard Ducharme
Led by Co-artistic Directors Jacob Wren and Sylvie Lachance, PME-ART was nominated at the 27th Conseil des arts de Montréal’s Grand-Prix in 2012. PME-ART’s past creations include the performances HOSPITALITY 1: The Title Is Constantly Changing, HOSPITALITY 3: Individualism Was A Mistake and The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information, the installations Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la mélancolie, HOSPITALITY 2: Gradually This Overview, The Title Is The Question, as well as Families Are Formed Through Copulation/La famille se crée en copulant, Le Génie des autres – Unrehearsed Beauty et En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize presented over the last twenty years in more than forty-eight cities in Quebec, Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States.
Focusing on artistic collaboration, the work of 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, of interrogating the performance situation. Performing as ourselves, we 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. Full of paradoxes and contradictions, the work is often destabilizing. Such destabilization is not only about art, but also echoes the social and personal discomfort so often encountered in daily life. We believe the acknowledging of uncomfortable realities, instead of pretending they are not there, is of fundamental importance for the development of critical approaches that are generous and unpredictable.
See PME-ART’s Artistic Statement: http://www.pme-art.ca/en/
Co-producers & residencies: PME-ART (Montréal), FFT (Düsseldorf), Wunder der Prärie Festival-Zeitraumexit (Mannheim), Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival (Helsinki), Inkonst (Malmö) & Usine C (Montréal), with the support of the Kunststiftung NRW (Germany).