Explore Experimental Fiction Environment: HardLife Archipelago

Announcing the new short story experiment HardLife Archipelago by artist Daniel O'Reilly

The new project by artist/surrealist Daniel O'Reilly, co-founder of The Unstitute, is now online. HardLife Archipelago is a dream-performance project in which Daniel produces a sequence of short stories available to patrons of this process.

"The HardLife Archipelago project is a writing event rather than a traditional novel - like a collection of surreal stories and tales you can dive into wherever and however you feel. The dreamlike stories you can explore on my Patron-only feed are like little imaginary islands - complete and perfect territories in themselves - that will eventually span an entire chain of fictions - or archipelago - called HardLife. This map of my dreams, like a reef of fictional outgrowths are the hallucinatory leftovers from this performance of writing - or rather, takeaways from the rite of dreaming.

"My job here as writer is diverse. A story may be the capture and taming of a wild animal. It might be a toy, the kind a child grapples with the world through. A story may be a tick waiting in the long grass, an unfolding or hatching world, a facet of peripheral worlds lying in wait for a passing connection. A story may 'escape' out of my head - and into yours. In short, the stories of the HardLife Archipelago are a conveyance, an engine for anticipating dreams, rendezvous between writer and reader - an approach. Patreon is the platform that helps me get paid to do that. This is where I get paid to dream."

Explore HardLife now, read free articles and become a patron of the arts! https://www.patreon.com/DanielOReilly