Answers without Questions: John Rea, a Composite Sketch (Investigation)
This investigation about the composer, intellectual and professor John Rea, a man who likes paradoxes, will proceed by answers without questions. Like many of his works, it is rather by memory games that the investigation is conducted, toward a “composite sketch.” Thus, initially, five persons linked to John Rea (friends, former students, collaborators, colleagues and/or performers) were asked to write freely, based on the impulse of a memory mentioned to them, a brief essay on the individual under investigation. They are Jacques Drouin, Michel Gonneville, James Harley, Alexina Louie and Alex Pauk. Secondly, the participants were asked to read each other’s essays and write comments. To conclude, we identified some aspects that intersected and unfolded in these memory games, and frequently reappeared. But, like Penrose stairs, these responses, while not answering, raise many questions.