Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la mélancolie

2014

The Book of Disquiet, an assemblage of texts that Pessoa left behind, was published posthumously. To this day, there is an ongoing discussion as to how the material within the book should be organized, and what version might be considered “final.” Our project aims to pursue the writing, a way of turning this highly debated book into a new one, less melancholic, to see how far it will stretch. It is a tribute to the imaginative possibilities of reading as rewriting, how we each have our own version of the books we read, how we mix them with our lives and the world around us.

Sitting around a large table, several performers engage in the ongoing process of rewriting The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. The goal is to make a new co-authored version of the book, to make it our own, to make it more a part of our current world, to take the author’s deep melancholy and transform it into something somehow a little happier. 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. By making these analogies literal, by performatively enacting this metaphor, we hope to create a space for an ongoing conversation between coincidence, insight and nuance.

This performance installation occupies a whole gallery. A closing performance allows for all the pages we have rewritten over the previous days to be compiled into a single object referred to as the “monster book.”

Montréal, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery – festival Actoral • Saguenay, UQAC’s Chaire de recherche en dramaturgie sonore – International conference “Les pratiques contemporaines de l’écriture textuelle pour la scène” (contemporary practices in textual writing for the stage) – Gallery L’Œuvre de l’Autre

Adventures Can Be Found Anywhere, même dans la mélancolie playfully and intelligently renders literature in a gallery. Crafted at the edges of visual art, performance, music, literature and poetry, the installation […] offers that every reading is an act of rewriting. Literature is considered as a visual art, staged with invention and finesse, resolutely far from theatrical traditions.

With their most recent accessible and innovative oddity, PME-ART’s thinkers continue to question our relationship to art, giving rise to the poetic in unexpected ways. Punk is not dead.

 – Nayla Naoufal, Le Devoir, Montréal

Here, the usually private interpretation at play when we read is rendered public. The performance installation also operates as a site for exchange, an overlay of voices, a choir where editor, artist and receiver sing together. What better way to read Pessoa, whose name in Portuguese means “person”?

– Sophie Lapalu, Revue Marges n° 20, Montréal