Long Relay: conceived and led by Tim Etchells and Adrian Heathfield
PARTICIPANTS' BIOGRAPHIES
Simon Bayly
Simon Bayly is currently a Senior Lecturer at Roehampton University and director of the London-based theatre company PUR. His interests are in the overlap between the practices of the making of performance and those of other (non)disciplines, including philosophy, psychoanalysis, group analysis and organisational development; the relationship between performance and pedagogy; practical investigations into contemporary understandings of the figure of the expert; exploring questions raised by 'research' considered as a strategy for artistic production and vice versa. Recent performance projects include Non-Domestic Bliss (in progress), current PUR performance project, Babel of Tower: A Report to the Academy, 2007 and Dear All, 2006.
Tim Etchells is best known for his work as director of the UK's renowned experimental performance ensemble Forced Entertainment. He is the author of Certain Fragments, a critical work on contemporary performance, The Dream Dictionary and Endland Stories. Etchells also works as a solo artist in visual art, video and installation as well as collaborative projects with artists, choreographers and performance artists including Franko B, Asta Groting, Marnix De Nixs, Elmgreen & Dragsett and Meg Stuart. His novel The Broken World is a guide to an imaginary computer game and will be published by Heinemann in 2008.
M. John Harrison has been writing fiction across a broad front since 1965. Climbers, 1989, won the Boardman Tasker prize for mountaineering literature. His new book, Nova Swing, took this year's Arthur C Clarke Award. He currently reviews fiction for the The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement.
Writer and curator Adrian Heathfield has worked in and around the scenes of performance and live art for many years. He is best known for his essays and books including Live: Art and Performance, Small Acts and Shattered Anatomies. He co-curated the performance events Live Culture at Tate Modern, 2003. Over the last eight years Heathfield has created a series of dialogue performances with writers and artists including Peggy Phelan, Alan Read, Graeme Miller and Hugo Glendinning. He is Professor of Performance and Visual Culture at Roehampton University, London.
Shelley Jackson is a writer and artist known for her cross-genre experiments, including contributions to electronic literature and hypertext. She is widely known for Patchwork Girl (hypertext) , 1995, a reworking of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and other hypertexts, including My Body and The Doll Games. In 2003 she launched the Skin Project, described as a mortal work of art it is a short fiction published exclusively in the form of tattoos on the skin of volunteers, one word at a time. She is the author of the novel Half Life, 2006, which won the 2006 James Tiptree, Jr. Award. She also authored the short story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy, published by Anchor in 2002, and has written and illustrated several children's books. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Grand Street, the Village Voice, Conjunctions, Fence and the Mississippi Review. Shelley teaches in the graduate writing program at The New School University and is a writer-in-residence at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.
Deborah Levy's writing spans fiction, performance, visual culture and radio. Her novels include Beautiful Mutants, Swallowing Geography, The Unloved and Billy & Girl. Her short stories, Pillow Talk in Europe And Other Places were broadcast on BBC Radio 4, as was her recent acclaimed adaptation of Katherine Mansfield's early modernist stories. She has written for Granta, Eclectic England, INiva, Vertigo, Bookworks and most recently for Barbara Campbell's 1001 Nights Cast.
Tom McCarthy
Tom McCarthy's novel Remainder has been translated into several languages and is currently being adapted for cinema by Film4/Cowboy Films. His non-fiction book Tintin and the Secret of Literature is published by Granta Books, and his new novel Men in Space has just been released by Alma Books. He is also General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society (INS).
Fiona Templeton's work ranges across writing, performance, theatre and visual art for which she has received numerous awards and fellowships. Her influential YOU--The City, 1989, 'an intimate citywide play for an audience of one', has been recreated in six countries and languages, most recently as a key project of Rotterdam Cultural Capital of Europe 2001. Her most recent work was L'Ile, a recreation of the dreams of the people of Lille. Her current project, The Medead, is a 12-performer epic retelling the life-story of Medea, produced by Glasgow Tramway. Her books include London, Hi Cowboy, oops the join, Mum in Airdrie, Cells of Release and Elements of Performance Art. Fiona regularly publishes poetry and theoretical articles and is contributing editor for various publications. She is a Senior Lecturer at Brunel University, and lives in London and New York.