Texts from the Fringe
You're in the theater lobby waiting to be seated. Several cell phones ring simultaneously and people check their text messages. The next thing you know, a stranger approaches, tells you a secret and leaves you a calling card. You follow the instructions on the card: visit a web address, report about your experience and register as a participant in Texts From the Fringe.
Texts From the Fringe is a performance that relies on participants to play their part. Sign up and you agree to follow some simple instructions that are sent to you by text message during the Phoenix Fringe Festival. As a participant, you will be sent a series of instructive text messages (standard messaging rates apply). Perform the prescribed gestures when you get the instructions and play a part in the Phoenix Fringe Festival.
The texts are derived from research about the performances and are intended to promote closeness between strangers. Texts From the Fringe expands the location of the festival through research, gesture, and sound.
Everyone is welcome to participate, regardless of geographic location. Sign up now at http://www.jonovelli.com/txtphxff_contact.htm!
Artist's Statement
The text message oscillates between a phone call and an email. Ringing and read, texts land in our ear, are pressed out between our fingers and scanned by our eyes. They carry profound news, late notices, early arrivals, and sweet nothings.
Texts speed up and depersonalize communication and now they can also be occasions for closeness. Texts From the Fringe is an opportunistic happening that operates with a profound faith in the value of inter-subjective experience.
The ethics of this project does not decry technology, but capitalizes on it.
Artist Bio
Jo Novelli lives in Phoenix and is writing a dissertation for a PhD in Performance Studies at New York University. Visit www.jonovelli.com to see documentation of her other performances and read more about her. Jo likes to perform when no one is looking.