I wrote a very short story for this project last night, which was then performed by the artist Barbara Campbell (while I was asleep far away in a different time zone).

“1001 nights cast

In 1001 nights cast, Barbara Campbell performs a short text-based work each night for 1001 consecutive nights. The performance is relayed as a live webcast to anyone, anywhere, who is logged on to this website at the appointed time, that is, sunset at the artist’s location.

A frame story written by the artist introduces the project’s nightly performances. It is a survival story and it creates the context for subsequent stories generated daily through writer/performer collaborations made possible by the reach of the internet.

Each morning Barbara reads journalists’ reports covering events in the Middle East. She selects a prompt word or phrase that leaps from the page with generative potential. She renders the prompt in watercolour and posts it in its new pictorial form on the website. Participants write a story using that day’s prompt in a submission of up to 1001 words.”

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You can see the ‘prompt’ I got and read my story here (the performance part you can only see live as a webcast):

http://1001.net.au/Prompt/1299

And search other stories, check out the project in other ways at http://1001.net.au/

You can also submit stories to the project.



Sept 11 here passed almost unnoticeably. Didn’t see or hear a thing of motorcades, church bells, speeches or parades, missed the TV news. We never put the TV on in this apartment. Online the newspaper headlines “Bush lays wreath at Ground Zero” is not really a story I am going to read. (I did read the one where he admitted Saddam was not behind 9/11 though. That was grimly amusing. Next week he is going to announce that the world is not flat but round, as he slowly works his way back through history announcing things that are well known and/or totally obvious to everyone. Days are shorter in the winter admits Bush. War in Vietnam was a mistake. Etc).

When we went out to buy wine late at night there was a very dark dramatic sky with huge white moonlit clouds. The twin lights of the memorial were shooting straight up, as they always do, but hitting the clouds, like their path was blocked, filling the cloud immediately above them with light. We passed a guy stood on a street corner and I noticed him for some reason, I assumed he was waiting for a friend. We got wine, the looped off in another direction to get detergent (see how it all very exciting here?). When we finally walked back the same way perhaps 45 minutes later the same guy was still stood there, in the same spot and faced in the same direction. Only then did we realise that he was looking downtown to the lights, just stood there watching them and thinking.

Found this older fragment about process – which I wrote when we were working on the new Forced Entertainment performance earlier this year. It kind of fits with what I wrote about working on the book recently.. so thought it good to include here.

(Makes me think too about the way that I’m proably constantly having and re-having the same or similar thoughts, which can seem just the same amount of work/inspiration/suprise second time around!).
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Thinking about.. the process, whilst in conversation, or alone, of mentally ‘running’ imaginary or speculative bits of the show to see if they work.
Often this is in relation to transitions or sequences – trying to figure out if a certain way of getting from the ‘gameshow material’ out of the ‘march of time’ is plausible… via an interview between Terry and Bruno. So mentally you’re sat there and in the stage of your head you’re picturing the end of the ‘march of time’ and you’re thinking ‘so he does that and she says that and then [weiter…]