1001 Nights Cast: A Durational Performance

ELO member Barbara Campbell recently passed the one year benchmark in her performance/writing project 1001 nights cast. Campbell’s first webcast was performed from Paris on June 21st, 2005 and continues for 1001 nights.

“In 1001 nights cast, Barbara Campbell performs a short text-based work for 1001 consecutive nights. The performance is relayed as a live webcast to anyone, anywhere, who is logged onto to http://1001.net.au at the appointed time, that is, sunset at the artist’s location.”

Reinterpreting and expanding the story of Scheherazade, the daily process of 1001 nights cast begins each morning when Campbell reads news coming out of the Middle East; she selects a phrase from her reading that “generates potential.” Campbell then renders the selected phrase in watercolor and posts the painted image of the phrase on the website. Visitors who choose to participate in the project are “invited to write a story using that day’s prompt in a submission of up to 1001 words. The writing deadline expires three hours before that night’s performance.”

To explore and/or participate in the project, visit http://1001.net.au

Conjoined twin birth announcement: HALF LIFE, by Shelley Jackson

ELO member Shelley Jackson, author of “Skin,” and The Melancholy of Anatomy, has published her first novel, Half Life. The novel tells the story of Nora and Blanche, “a two headed woman in a world where conjoined twins have their own subculture, slang, and self-help books.” When Nora decides to pursue a service called “The Divorce” in an effort “to take back her birthright: the first person pronoun,” only one person stands in her way: Blanche.
For more information on Half Life, visit http://www.ineradicablestain.com/half_life.html