User:SN/Reflections on Thematic 3: Navigating Borders and Contours

Being intrigued and at some point frustrated by the discussions we had about Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, her book, attempts to break down references between texts, texts and images, speculations about subjectivity and fuzziness in narrative practice, I decided to think more about the methods, that can be used to blur narration.

Narrative, in general, is a story, a number of events, connected to each other and presented in a sequence of words or still/moving images. Talking about words, spoken or written, the semantic coherence between them trough grammar systems and linguistic constructions is a condition in which narratives can be understood and the field I want to play on.

Zaum is the name for the language, or better to say, linguistic experiments in sound symbolism and language made by Russian futurists in early XX century. Gerald Janecek defines zaum as a language with undefined meanings. The poetic output is comparable to that of the Dadaism but differs in linguistic theory and approach. The other example in Europian literature are verses in Lewis Carroll "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".

According Janecek there are mainly four kinds of zaum. The most interest evoke syntactical and supra syntactical zaum, when ordinary words are used in a way the relationship between them remain unclear or with the precise accuracy of grammatical structures and sentences, a high degree of uncertainty appears on the level of reference - in other words, becomes unintelligible, what text is about. (Trans-sense poetry of Daniil Kharms).

Playing on this field, I would like to investigate more the possibilities of narration from the perspective of syntactical and supra syntactical zoom. Experiment, supporting spoken text with moving images.

The text is about a man, a woman, nature, and architecture. The text is supported with four videos projected on transparent screens that organize faces of the cube. Depending on perspective spectator is watching videos, new meaning appears from the text, as the image helps to stress certain words. Our brain, which is seeking for links and coherence, creates a story, new every time spectator changes its position in space.