Seated around a large table, a group of artists apply themselves to the task of rewriting the journals and notebooks of the U.S author and activist Susan Sontag. They reappropriate her words and unpack their possibilities, altering the substance of the text by projecting themselves into it. Each fragment is read, shared, exhibited. Through this ceaseless communal labour, the performers produce a new, collective work that’s closer to us.

Immersed in the silence of writing, the drawings of words, and the echoes of voices that mingle together, the audience combines its own experience of the world, of art, and of desire with that of the young Sontag, who is transformed and multiplied under the authorship of the assembled artists. This performance-installation presented continuously over eight days is a vibrant and mischievous declaration of love to literature. The interdisciplinary group PME-ART celebrates the creative power of reading by seizing upon its potential for perpetual reactivation.

Montréal, Festival TransAmériques + Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen