Programming
Shannon Cochrane and Jacob Wren
Five Important Books
The academic community and the general public often debate the criteria for recognition of literary work. The importance given to a book reflects the values of a society. The Five Important Books project takes these issues out of the realm of normative discourse and places them in the hands of readers who still appreciate a good book.
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The academic community and the general public often debate the criteria for recognition of literary work. The importance given to a book reflects the values of a society. The Five Important Books project takes these issues out of the realm of normative discourse and places them in the hands of readers who still appreciate a good book.
The format is simple: five books are chosen randomly and imprecisely. As the chapters unfold, the artists discuss the plot, themes, and underlying issues. Often they disagree. Often they are wrong. In this way, they play with the problematic nature of memory and document the learning process.
Suggested reading: Hannah Arendt's Condition of Modern Man, Réjean Ducharme's L’avalée des avalés, Nicholas Mosley's Hopeful Monsters, Lawrence Weschler's Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder and a fifth to be confirmed.
Shannon Cochrane is a performance artist living in Toronto. Over the past seven years, her work has been shown in Toronto, Montreal, the United States, England and Switzerland in artist-run centers, galleries, and at events for a variety of arts, comedy and theater audiences. She is a curator and founding member of the 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival and is still active on the coordinating and programming committee. Cochrane reclaims simple phenomena and activities to develop performative collaborations that take into account the audience's experience as image-makers.
Jacob Wren is a writer, director and co-artistic director of PME. Through his work, he explores ways of speaking to the audience in a casual way (through words and movement), ways that are both ironic and sincere and that take into account the inherent discomfort of communication. His most recent book Unrehearsed Beauty is published by Coach House Books.
Five Important Books is part of Spontaneous Collaborations by Candid Stammer, made possible by the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts - Inter-Arts Program.
