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- Title
Making and Breaking Space: Rethinking Montage in Digital Writing.
- Authors
Luers, Will
- Abstract
What is a montage theory and practice for the post-digital age? The modernist technique of montage- the creation of composite wholes from fragments-is at the heart of much of digital writing. In tweets, blogs, hypertext, multimedia fiction and recombinant poetry, the juxtapositions and constellations of distinct elements (text, image and sound) are the norm. Cinematic montage is usually opposed to Hollywood continuity or "invisible" editing, because in the latter the cut is masked. There is no gap to ponder, no room for the viewer. In popular movies, comics and commercials, montage has become normalized into a more fragmented continuity. Making space, more cohesive narrative worlds, through montage proved to be a faster method for conveying story and capturing attention. Digital expression has inherited both tendencies of montage: the making and breaking of space, but the dilemma for digital writers and artists is that the montage effects have been weakened by their ubiquity. If montage is the foundation of all digital expression, how can its affective powers still be used as a counterpractice to the more homogenizing montage of corporate media? What is the role of montage when there are no dominant narrative flows to disrupt? This paper will look to both cinema artists and authors of digital fiction whose approaches to montage offer possible ways out of this montage dilemma. Rethinking montage in digital writing means pursuing new methods to make and break spaces through bifurcation, juxtaposition, multiplicity, and indeterminate processes. Drawing on the montage theories of Eisenstein, Benjamin, and Kluge, I explore works of digital fiction that favor fragmentation over immersion as a way toward a cognitively expansive narrative unity.
- Subjects
HYPERTEXT fiction; SPACE; HYPERTEXT systems; AUTHORSHIP; BLOGS
- Publication
Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, 2020, Issue 36, p103
- ISSN
1555-9998
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.20415/rhiz/036.e07