SAD Tales for Sad Kids

A quirky literary event held at the Substation on 20 December 2019, SAD Tales for Sad Kids was a first foray into a type of "performed essay". While a more complete record of the event can be found on the webpage (http://daryl.li/SAD-Tales-for-Sad-Kids/), approaching its third anniversary, I figured that the booklet produced for the event should also be made available digitally. Also included here is the image used for postcards produced for the event. (All design work by Maddison Colvin.)

While this project happened before the Hall of Uselessness had been established, it shares the same ethos and is very much the precursor to it all. As I prepare for its spiritual successor in Failure Machine, Sad Kids feels very much at home here, an enacted aspiration and a point of origin.

- Daryl

From the Webpage

"On 20 December 2019, I had the opportunity to present my writing at the Substation in an event that was to focus on ideas of public space. Initially, I conceptualised it as a straightforward literary reading event featuring six brief excerpts from my work, with interactive elements that served to break up the monotony. However, as I continued to develop the concept, I came to see it as a cohesive presentation, one that sketched a broader meaning within its disconnections and empty spaces.

"Helped by the intimate space of the SAD Bar and the cosily sized group of attendees, it became an attempt at what I thought of as a 'performed essay', a text completed not only with the words, realisable only within a shared space and moment. Performance in literature has long intrigued me, not only in the sense of ironic, self-aware narrators, but in ideas of active participation, community, and transience. I hope that SAD Tales for Sad Kids was a first step in a continued investigation of these ideas."