Bob wrote:
> What dismayed Adorno about the project in 1935 was Benjamin's faith
> that a mere assemblage of objects (in this case, decontextualized
> quotations) could speak for itself.
A friend of mine once wanted to write a hypertext fiction piece
that would consist of a set of "rooms"/pages that you would wander
around in; there would be no action per se, just objects and rooms,
and the player/reader would slowly piece together a story from the
juxtaposition of what they could see.
So the word "decontextualized" is actually misleading here (I
assume, without having read any of Benjamin's stuff) -- the
quotations are taken out of their original contexts (though
presumably anyone who recognized them would get echoes of their
original contexts, adding depth -- cf "The Waste Land"), but in
recombining them the artist creates a new context, the context of
their juxtaposition with other quotations/objects. Or so it seems to
me.
>Can an assemblage, a collage, take the place of narrative?
It can certainly be art. And it can generate narrative in the
mind of the beholder -- or at least a shadow of narrative, from which
the interactor/viewer can perhaps extrapolate (interpolate?) the
narrative that casts that shadow. There's a lovely Lydia Davis short
story called "The French Lesson" which appears on the surface to be
teaching the reader a few words of French; but just under the surface
lurk echoes and shadows of a rather Gothic narrative with uncertain
details.
So it can substitute for narrative in some cases, but of course I
wouldn't want to see narrative entirely supplanted.
I'm obliquely reminded of a line from an Eleanor Arnason story,
"The Grammarian's Five Daughters." (It's a great story -- first
appeared in _Realms of Fantasy_ 6/99, reprinted in the latest
(thirteenth) _Year's Best Fantasy and Horror_.) One of the
characters says at one point, "Before, we had clear choices. Now,
the new complexity puts all in doubt." Complexity and subtlety
create uncertainty and ambiguity; this is often a good thing, and a
sign of Literary Depth in fiction, but it suggests that any attempt
to substitute collage for narrative will result in ambiguous
narrative. Something to keep in mind when creating such a thing.
(Of course, most good narrative is ambiguous at some level; the
reader/interactor collaborates in creating the experience; words
themselves are ambiguous. As is Art; look at cubism, "Nude
Descending a Staircase" say, attempts (I'm told) to portray simple
narrative (or at least time sequence) in a still flat 2D image. But
most good art is subject to discussion, interpretation, argument.
Ambiguous.)
--jed, musing
