Title: Narrativisationof siteand spatialisation of narrative
Abstract: This dissertation is a practice-based research project and consists of four video works
(Eight Men Lived in the Room - News (2010), Eight Men Lived in the Room - Filmset (2011),
The Life of a Comedian (2012), Memory Museum - Guro (2016)), an introduction with a
contextualization and methodology of the field and four essays.
As the title Narrativisation of Site and Spatialisation of Narrative suggests, my subject
matter and my research methodology are inseparable from each other and are also in an
inter-reflexive relationship. In order to find out how sites are narrativised, I experimented
with spatial structures in narrative. To investigate how narratives can be constructed by
spatial forms, I specifically selected a few sites as the subjects of my narrative. How do the
spatial forms and elements of the particular sites function as the subject, formal elements
or formal constitutive principles in narrative? This question has developed into an
exploration of the spatial perspective of narrative structures and its possibilities.
The places chosen in my research are places which have now been forgotten and have
disappeared from the archives, where individual memories and collective memories
intersect, and current places associated with them are unrecorded. These places were the
actual places that were chosen to experiment with as many forms of narrative as possible,
and these places contained different narrative forms and current situations which exist
somewhere between memory and oblivion.
This research was to find alternatives to the problems in narration through analysing the
places associated with past memories. The existing narratives based on the cultural forms
– archive videos, photos, memorials, performances and so on – were still limited to
incorporate contemporary temporality and diverse memories of the past. The linear
narrative form has limitations in the specification of the memories that were experienced
beyond the temporal boundaries. I thought that the introduction of spatial elements and
composition to the narrative form relating to past memories might provide an alternative direction to these limitations. Thus, I analysed examples of contemporary artwork that
have been converted into spatial experiences, not as a way of separating the boundaries of
time, but retaining the characteristics of temporal art, such as video and performance.
While collecting existing narratives about these sites and conducting critical research on
the contents and structures of these narratives, I came to recognise the problem of how
the stories are constructed. These narratives are time-oriented (for example,
chronologically arranged), unilinear, and dramatised in the format of introduction,
development, turn and conclusion. When it comes to narrativising stories of others, those
forms allow audiences or visitors to withdraw themselves from considering their own
ethical relationship to the stories or to feel ambivalent towards them. This is connected to
the conventional narrative structure, which ultimately leads itself to a time-oriented
narrative, and I began to ask what would be an alternative form that goes against the
temporal and causal conventions of narrative. In search of such form, I wanted to build
narratives about the particular sites mentioned above and while doing so, to experiment
with the spatial structure in the stories.
In this dissertation, the methodological parts of the essays play three different roles. First,
the essays present what I discovered and what I conducted during the work process. The
texts function as a space to which I transferred all the ‘things’ that I collected and
organised from the beginning to the end of the production as well as post-completion of
the work. They include both tangible and intangible materials. The function of my texts
can be compared to that of ‘the cabinet of curiosity’. The texts are close studies and
contemplation on the elements collected, and they also present these elements taken out
of their original contexts and enter them into the realm of artmaking. Second, the texts
reorganise the materials into meaningful experiences. They show how the ideas and
questions that I had during my ‘collecting’ process can turn into a more concrete and
relevant outcome. Third, the texts are instructions for my future artistic production as
well as scores for my future performance. They would serve as a starting point for the
questions or experimentations that would come after the completion of the artworks.
Using these methods, my dissertation also discusses the issue of simplification or unity in
narratives dealing with the past, the impossibility of representing the past and historical reality, audiences’ position as strangers, and the cultural locating of narrative along the
existing issues in contemporary documentary and video art that deal with the past. My
writing is a critical review of these issues and perceives them as a point of departure for
finding alternatives.
Publication Year: 2018
Publication Date: 2018-01-01
Language: en
Type: dissertation
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